


Summer Dreams

by appending_fic



Series: The Age of Mysteries (Ciphers) [1]
Category: Gravity Falls, Guardians of Childhood & Related Fandoms, Guardians of Childhood - William Joyce, Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Alien Biology, Betrayal, E. Aster Bunnymund Feels, Fearlings, Feelings, Friendship, Gravity Falls Traditions, Hugs, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Jealousy, Mabel Pines is the Best Mediator, Redemption, Seasonal Spirits and Guardians, Suspense, Threats of Rape/Non-Con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-07
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-04-19 15:37:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 12
Words: 24,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4751717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/appending_fic/pseuds/appending_fic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gravity Falls is full of weirdness, which means it can be as much a target of supernatural threats as places like Burgess. When a new arrival to Gravity Falls brings with him warnings of a new threat - or rather, an old one that has the potential to spread far beyond Gravity Falls. Luckily, the Guardians are on the case. Unfortunately, the job is complicated by Aster's old hopes and Jack's fears - tension that threatens to cause a split when the chips are down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: Birthday Presents

Kozmotis Pitchiner scrubbed his eyes before returning to his eternal watch. Even sustained by his ancient oath, he grew tired looking at nothing but the great prison. There were races who lived and died in a mere century, who could not understanding the mind-numbing boredom that could affect one who took upon a task meant to last for an Age.

And there were races who had not left their planets for the stars, where they could be ensured another of their species would be no further away than a mere ten thousand miles. There were people who felt an unpleasant pressure in the presence of others, who longed for distance from their fellows.

Even the shooting stars spoke to one another across the infinite vastness of space, in words of light and radiation, symphonies that filled the universe with their song.

Therefore it was not hyperbole, or not much, at least, to say that no creature had the capability to understand how lonely General Pitchiner was, sitting alone at the gate to a prison filled with bad dreams.

He had taken to inventing pictures in the distant stars, telling himself stories of the gods and heroes he sketched in his mind. The distant stars and imaginary pictures reminded him of the Constellations, who had so readily accepted his offer to stand guard over the Fearlings, to retreat to their distant homes, mocking Kozmotis with happiness he could never share…

“Papa!”

Kozmotis’ head snapped back to the great door, his heart racing. That had sounded like his little Emily. Impossible, he knew, for his dark little darling to be in a place like this, but the voice awoke something in him. Not fear, for he knew her to be safe a million billion miles away, but longing. He couldn’t count, anymore, how long it had been since he’d seen his wild child, since he’d heard her laugh or even seen her in one of her moods. 

“Papa, where are you?”

And there it came, the fear. Impossible for his child to be here, but Emily was a contrary thing. Kept from her father, told she could never see him, she might have snuck from her home to find a way here. She might have stumbled into the prison, and found that it was far easier to enter than to leave. So surrounded by the cells of Fearlings and other nightmares, her bravado would have faded, leaving her calling out for the one constant in her life, the one thing that could save her.

“Emily? Is that you?” 

“Papa!” There was relief in that voice, which came clearly, this time, from beyond the door to the prison. Kozmotis took a step forward before his good sense reasserted itself. He couldn’t go haring in there, leaving his post for the sake of some phantom. He had heard whispers in the night, sometimes, voices speaking his name. This could be another trick of a lonely mind-

“Papa! Please!” And there was panic there, a note of something worse, the realization that everything _won’t_ be alright, that Papas sometimes failed. A scream tore from the darkness beyond the door, and Pitchiner was lost.

He hurled himself to the door, gripping it hard as the ancient magitech bit at his flesh and spirit to determine he had the right to open the door. He pulled at the door with the prodigious strength of a general of the Golden Age, and after only a few moments, the door stood wide.

“Hang on darling, I’m coming-”

“Mazel tov!” What stood just inside the entrance to the prison was not his daughter. The creature was little more than a profile of a pyramid, bright yellow and inset with a single bulging eye. Sticklike arms dangled from its midsection, and legs with the same sketchy quality drooped from the bottom of its form. It wore a top hat and bow tie. Kozmotis had the uncomfortable feeling that the creature was grinning, despite its lack of a proper face. Looking at him created an uneasy sensation of vertigo, as if the form Kozmotis saw wasn’t all that was there…

“I bet you’ve guessed I’m not really your kid - I just don’t have the figure for it.” The creature darted forward to enter a slow orbit around Kozmotis. “It’s a shame she’s not here - kids are supposed to show up for big moments in their parents’ lives. Or is it vice versa? Damn, I think I should have watched more movies as a child.”

The creature hadn’t yet attacked him, but its actions still left Kozmotis with a deep sense of unease. He tried to find some sort of mental footing, but he still hadn’t recovered from hearing his daughter’s voice only to find...that inside the door. 

“Big moments? What are you talking about?”

“Why, your retirement party!” The creature threw a handful of confetti into the air and produced a small horn it blew on as the paper drifted to earth. “I’ve got a cake somewhere, but you know these sorts of places, they claimed they didn’t have enough room for the full ‘Pitchiner’-”

“What do you mean, retirement? I am a faithful servant of the Constellations. I may be released from my duty only at their command.”

The creature paused, eye dropping to half-closed. “Yeaaaah, maybe. But here’s the thing - what’s a guard without a prisoner to keep an eye on?”

It was only at that moment that Pitchiner realized what he had done. He darted back to the edge of the door, to close it before the creature found time to release the prisoners. The pyramid creature just laughed.

“Haha, Pitch, you’re a little slow on the uptake there. Not to mention late. The Fearlings are creatures of nightmare - they move as fast as thought. They were out the moment you opened that door. Did you think they were going to build up behind me for one mad rush at freedom? Give you one last chance to close the door against them before they spilled out into the unsuspecting universe?”

The shadows behind the creature were shifting, as if something dark were moving within it. The creature’s single eye widened. “Of course, I do try to live up to expectations.”

“No,” Kozmotis growled. “I will not let this happen.”

“Didn’t you hear me? It’s too late! Anyway, I thought you _wanted_ to get out of here, see your little Emily again.”

“Not like this,” Kozmotis snarled, reaching for his sword.

As fast as thought, the creature had said. There was no time to close the door, no time to defend against them. His sword was still by his side as they swarmed him, biting him and diving into the wounds, traveling toward their goal, his uncorrupted heart…

“Oh, damn! It’s your birthday, isn’t it, Pitch? A new creature of darkness born into the universe, and me here without a present. What the heck - take the whole universe, buddy. You deserve it.”

\---

Pitch Black was good at dark, hidden places. Many of his more cunning plans were hatched exploring forgotten tombs and libraries, places full of secrets all but lost to the world. He felt at home in places like this musty, forgotten lab. He trailed a finger along a console, examining the dust on it. Someone had been here recently - relatively so, for there were layers of dust everywhere, just some deeper than others. But it was still abandoned.

He smiled to himself. Someone had been down here, had seen what was down here, and had _forgotten about it_.

Well, he could be wrong; there were a lot of dangerous things in here. Primitive things, not anywhere near the mastery of machine and magic as had defined the Golden Age, but dangerous nonetheless.

He took a careful inventory as he explored, finding more than a few little gems he’d need to take with him, little party favors for the Guardians. And then, hidden in the back of a room behind a secret door, he found something...wonderful.

“Oh, you poor little thing,” he murmured, pressing a hand flat against the plane of ice. “You survived a genocide, a trillion miles, and a billion years, only to get stuck on ice by some overzealous scientist. Well, it looks like it’s your lucky day.”

His, too.


	2. A Friend in Need

Bilberry leapt from branch to branch without pause. His muscles were burning, legs shuddering with every impact. When they all but collapsed, he scrabbled desperately at the wood for purchase, finding just enough to make another leap. He didn’t dare look back, didn’t dare slow down. The shadows were chasing him, and the slightest misstep could lead to a fate worse than death.

Something squirmed in his grasp; Bilberry shifted his grip to keep from crushing the precious package, nearly slipping in the process.

Howls of anticipation spurred him on. He couldn’t give up; this wasn’t just about him. The fate of the world was in the balance.

A claw brushed against his hind leg like a breath of cold air, and the knee buckled.

\---

There had been...fallout from the revelation that their Grunkle Stan was their Great-Uncle Stanley instead of their Great-Uncle Stanford. For understandable reasons, Mabel’s and Dipper’s parents had concerns about letting their minor children spending time with a man who had outstanding arrest warrants pretty much everywhere. It had taken an entire winter to convince their parents to consider letting them spend another minute with either Stan, and most of the spring to convince Stanford to let them stay in his house.

Nine months had changed Gravity Falls. The uneasy truce between the brothers Stan had shifted into something more comfortable. Wendy was starting to talk about college, widening the gulf Dipper had always felt between them. Grenda and Candy had found new hobbies. And without the Gleefuls, things felt marginally less sinister.

It was a pretty good summer, mostly. Nothing was going to stop the weirdness in Gravity Falls, but things seemed less...apocalyptic. There wasn’t one sighting of Bill Cipher. Once or twice, they even managed to have a civil interaction with Pacifica.

As they entered the tail end of August, however, a new sort of tension descended over the town. The heat and humidity grew until it was stifling. As people wilted under the heat, tempers grew short, and the normally friendly town became something of a mine field. After a week of this, Dipper decided it might be something weird and paranormal, and went to the basement to consult with Uncle Ford.

He’d dismantled the dimensional portal, and something of a normal research lab had taken over. At the beginning of the summer, Ford had given Dipper a tour, telling Dipper he was welcome any time. This would have sent him into paroxysms of joy just a few months ago, but Dipper had since realized that the author of the journals wasn’t superhuman, wasn’t actually some grand historical figure. Great-Uncle Ford was smart, yes, but he had the Pines penchant for not thinking things through. He wasn’t a people person - didn’t like them much, and couldn’t read them. The fact that he’d trusted Bill Cipher at one point was proof enough of that. He got grumpy when he got hungry, and he forgot to eat. Dipper suspected part of the truce between him and Grunkle Stan was that Grunkle Stan put some effort into making sure his brother actually ate.

The thing was, Dipper had realized ‘The Author of the Journals’ wasn’t some mythical figure. He was his Great-Uncle Ford, a living, breathing person, who was cool and curious like Dipper. So the invitation was welcome, but Dipper tried not to take advantage of it too much, recognizing that Ford didn’t need a thirteen-year-old underfoot all the time.

Ford was writing in a book - a fourth journal, Dipper realized with a tip of his head. Dipper coughed quietly to draw the man’s attention, and when he saw Dipper, Ford gave him a polite grin.

“What brings you down to the dungeon, kid?”

“I wanted to see if you knew anything about this weird heat wave. Is there some weird Gravity Falls stuff that might be causing it?”

Ford snorted. “Yeah, but not the way you’re thinking. It happens sometimes, before Squirrel Day.”

Dipper tried to take Gravity Falls’ weird traditions seriously, but it was hard, especially when he remembered how much Quentin Trembley had had to do with its founding. Squirrel Day was the opposite of Groundhog Day. There was a red squirrel named Gravity Gus who was able to predict when autumn would come. There was a four-hundred-page book detailing the meaning of every possible reaction Gus could have when he was released from his little pen at the Northwest Mansion. There was, as always, a spooky element to the whole thing - Dipper had looked at the logs, and they’d been _almost_ right for the past forty years. It was, he suspected, a little hard to distinguish between a million different things that a squirrel might do, allowing for a little inaccuracy.

They’d both seen too much to argue about how such an arrangement made no sense, had no scientific basis. But it still rankled to be forced to acknowledge something so blatantly magical. Ford must have seen some of the annoyance on Dipper’s face, because he chuckled and patted his shoulder.

“One of these days, it’ll all make sense, don’t worry, kid. Magic’s got to have rules, and that means there’s something making it work. But Squirrel Day - it’s got that basic seasonal spirit worship thing going on that makes me think old Gus has started to embody the passage from summer to autumn. And sometime recently. Have you seen the old logs? Right only about half the time.” He shook his head. “If I’d noticed it earlier, I would have taken steps to see if other manifestations had been seen in Gravity Falls-”

“The Summerween Trickster nearly ate me and Mabel last year,” Dipper offered.

“What? Do you remember what it looks like? What were its talents? Were there any noticeable weaknesses-” Ford suddenly snapped his mouth shut, giving Dipper a hesitant smile. “Sorry. Got a little carried away there.”

Dipper shrugged. “It’s okay.” It was. Great-Uncle Ford helped Dipper feel less like a freak. To see that Dipper wasn’t the only person in the family with that bone-deep curiosity made him feel a little more like a part of it. “But yeah, he’s real. And…” A half-remembered scrap of paper called itself to mind. “I’m pretty sure Santa Claus is, too.”

Ford grabbed a tape recorder. “Hypothesis. Existence of both minor seasonal spirits and a more well-known one suggests a wide variety of spirits. Investigate major and minor totemic entities to determine baseline for existence.” He flushed when he realized Dipper had seen that. “Sorry. Just need to take notes to look at stuff later. Otherwise I get distracted from what I’m doing now, or forget about it-”

“No, it’s great! I gotta get one of those. If I had a nickel for everything I forgot because I had an idea when Mabel was dragging me out somewhere…” They shared a smile with each other, remembrance of the trials of living with someone much more excitable and much less thoughtful than them.

“Anyway, your original question.” Dipper stood suddenly at attention. “Every ten years or so, it gets real hot around Squirrel Day. It cools right down afterward, even if autumn’s still six weeks off.”

“Okay. So not a problem, right?” 

“Right. Can I help you with anything else?”

Any other time, Dipper would have asked to stay just to see what Ford was up to. But there was a strange feeling in his gut. He wasn’t the sort to really trust intuition like that - Gideon had made him wary of such sixth senses. But he worried on the feeling as he left the basement and slipped outside. It took a while to place it.

He was on edge because things in Gravity Falls were _never_ that easy. There was always some complication that turned the whole thing into a supernatural mess. He was about to circle back to the store to see if he could weasel something out of Wendy when howls twisted through the trees.

They weren’t any animal he recognized, and something about the sound seemed to bypass all rational thought and whip his mind into a terrified frenzy. The urge to flee passed after only a moment, but in pushing it down, Dipper felt a frantic energy take its place.

Fight or flight, he thought vaguely.

Something fell from the trees, landing heavily on the ground. Dipper had no time to process it; it wasn’t moving, wasn’t a threat, but the dark forms at the edge of his vision _were_.

They looked like shadows, but moved like physical beings, hopping between branches, climbing on the trunks, and slinking through the bushes. They didn’t need to howl again to tell Dipper they were dangerous, the source of the adrenaline that was flooding his body. The problem was he didn’t have anything that could count as a weapon to fight them with.

They did, however, seem uncertain about drawing closer. Dipper took a closer look, and wanted to laugh when he saw it. They were in the trees, but not the top of them. They crouched under bushes, clinging to the places on the trees where the shadows fell.

But they were crowding to the very edge of the shadows, as if building up their courage.

Well, Dipper knew how to deal with that. It wasn't much, just a little compass Grunkle Stan had given him at the end of the last summer. But it was made of polished steel, which meant it was really good at reflecting sunlight.

The little beam wasn't wide, but it was concentrated sunlight, and it was enough to send the creatures skittering away. It was the work of a few careful minutes before they decided that there were better times to chase their prey. Darker times, certainly, and that thought was enough to send a shiver down Dipper's spine.

But there were more important things to worry about - a large form crumpled on the ground, just beyond the shadows of the trees nearest the Mystery Shack.

Dipper approached cautiously. For the moment, the form was just a mass of rust-red fur, which suggested there were teeth and claws in there that might snap if he drew too close too quickly.

“Hey. Um, the shadow-things are gone now. You’re safe. And my sister’s been studying first aid, so we can try to help you…”

The form stirred, lashing out blindly, and Dipper was glad he’d kept his distance. He caught sight of fangs and claws, and then both were receding, and he was looking at something that looked like a large, humanoid rabbit. Its eyes were red-rimmed and half-lidded, exhausted, if Dipper knew anything about the look. Something squirmed down low, and the rabbit wearily lifted an arm.

A red squirrel with a distinctive sunburst patch on its back climbed free of the rabbit’s grasp and scurried up to the top of its head, chittering anxiously.

“Um, hi?”

“Thank you,” the rabbit managed to say in a gravelly voice. It coughed a few times before continuing, voice a little smoother, though still deep. “Things could have gotten a little hairy if you hadn’t driven them off.”

Dipper shrugged. “Just a day in the life. What were they? And what are you doing with Gravity Gus?”

The rabbit shivered. “They’re fearlings. And they were trying to kill Gus to make it so summer never ends.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Re: continuity. A lot is the same for our Gravity Falls-ians, though bits and pieces - the purpose of the portals, Bill's actions after the reactivation of the portal, as well as pretty much anything after He is Not What He Seems - I've twisted around as needed. The Guardians' history is a bastardization of the books, movie, and weird notions - among other things, yes, as per Gravity Falls, Nicholas is the now and forever President of the United States. I've basically presumed that unexplained hijinks during the current season resolved at least some portion of the Gideon Gleeful and Bill Cipher problems.


	3. An Unexpected Visitor

It was late summer, just a little before Aster needed to start worrying about preparations for Easter. He was taking a little time - not quite a walkabout - before he had to get back to work. This required a stop by the Bennett household, and a visit with Sophie, else he’d never hear the end of it.

It was dusk when he arrived at the house, the sun just dropping against the horizon. It had been sweltering for the last few weeks, even in the Warren, which normally managed to keep the worst of the heat off by virtue of being underground. It had started a few decades ago, a rising heat just before fall, and it had taken all of Katherine’s skills to track it down to a little town in Oregon, to a local liminal spirit, a squirrel that heralded autumn the way Phil did spring. There was enough belief to make it real, but not yet enough to make the squirrel a spirit.

Aster’d peeked in on the squirrel once or twice, and the town around it. A strange place, Gravity Falls, where spare belief sloshed about like a too-full bathtub, and wondrous things happened, magical and technological all weaving together into a place that could only be called ‘strange’.

There were other spirits there - the Summerween Trickster, one more suited to autumn than summer, and others, still stranger than him.

In any case, it was hot, but it would pass in a week or so, when the squirrel saw his shadow or buried an acorn or whatever it was the critter did to bring about autumn. When Aster caught sight of the Bennett home, he sped up, though, eager to experience the relief of the air-conditioned interior.

As he slipped in through a window, Aster paused. He heard voices, not just Sophie’s and Jamie’s, but one a little lower, good-natured and warm…

What was Jack doing here?

Sophie’s room was empty, and all three voices seemed to be coming from Jamie’s, so Aster found his way there. Jamie was looking at the screen of his computer; Sophie had scrambled onto his lap, not aware how much larger she’d gotten, making the position uncomfortable. Jack was watching over their shoulder, something in the set of his face that put Aster on edge. Worry, he thought…

“You haven’t spent all arvo in here, have you?”

Jack spun around, grinning at Aster. “What, and risk melting out there? Of course we’ve been in here. Jaime’s been showing us Youtube. There’s this kid who lives in a place that’s seriously weird, like, Guardians-weird-”

“Gravity Falls?”

Jack paused mid-sentence, his mouth hanging open. Shock looked good on him, or at least the silence was novel. “How did you know?”

“Luck,” Aster replied. He stepped up to the computer. Indeed, there was a video of a girl traipsing through a northwestern forest, a boy narrating something about forest gnomes. It was Gravity Falls, all right. He scanned the list of related videos, and saw something that made his heart surge. It was impossible, but-

“Switch over to that one.” Jack followed Aster’s pointing finger and frowned, thoughtfully, at Aster. He didn’t know, couldn’t know - but Aster might have to come clean about this sooner, now. Obligingly, Jack moved something on the computer to bring up a new video, one called ‘Rabbit (Easter Bunny?!?) at Lunch’.

He couldn’t hear what was going on in the video, could barely see anything besides the Pooka sitting at a kitchen table, devouring an egg salad sandwich. His fur was rust-red, inlaid with black markings in a vaguely familiar pattern. He was slender, body lean and angled as the forest-dwelling Pooka tended to be, more like a squirrel than a rabbit. Brief glances at the camera revealed red eyes. The Pooka was wary, nervous, eyes scanning the kitchen constantly. But he wasn’t hurt, wasn’t dead or worse. It was another _Pooka_.

“Bunny, are you okay?”

Aster vaguely heard Jack’s voice through the haze, the warring disbelief and relief, the surging hope that finally, there was another one, another survivor. He wanted to stay here and stare at the image forever, but a more sensible part of him made a much better suggestion.

“We need to see North.”

\--

North had insisted on seeing the video himself, and had pulled up the website of the videographer, carefully examining the dozen or so pictures the boy had posted of the Pooka. At last he straightened and gave Aster a hesitant smile.

“It certainly looks like Pooka.”

“Pooka?” Jack gave Aster a wide-eyed look, confused. “It’s a big rabbit, like you, right?”

Aster sighed. He’d hoped to manage this when he and Jack were alone, not with an audience to witness Jack telling him to piss off when he learned what Aster’d been keeping from him.

“I’m not a rabbit, Jack. Not a kangaroo, either, so stow that yabber. I’m a Pooka - we’re from a planet a - a long way away. Pitch - he and the fearlings hunted the Pooka near to extinction. I was - I thought I was the last one alive.”

He’d expected an explosion, fury that Aster had kept something from him this long, but instead he got a wide-eyed look, a little lost and awed. It made something in Aster’s heart clench.

“You’re - I thought you were just a big grumpy bunny.” He stepped closer, and now Aster could see the boy’s eyes shining with moisture. “But you’re alone. Like…”

Like Jack. Aster barely had time to process that thought before there was a weight pressed against him, and arms tight around his middle. He startled for a moment, looking at the others for guidance, and when he received no help from the larrikins sitting around grinning at him, he reached down to return the embrace.

He’d just managed to get used to the touch when Jack drew back, cheeks taking on an almost violet hue from the blush shining out under his pale, almost-blue skin.

“Sorry. Got carried away there.”

“You never apologized for that before,” he grumbled, but couldn’t put any heat into the complaint. “It’ll be apples; I just don’t...hug much.”

“Oh, yes,” Tooth tittered, fluttering around them at head-height. “Bunny doesn’t get nearly enough hugs.” There was a gleam in her eyes, something mischievous that seemed to awaken a similar spirit in Jack.

“Really?” He gave Aster an assessing glance, offered him a wide grin that was almost predatory, and then casually stepped away from Aster, whistling. It should have been worrying, but the moment of empathy that had passed between them soothed the feeling. Jack...understood a little better, and he wouldn’t use the knowledge to hurt.

“Well, if this is another long-lost Pooka, why don’t we check him out? The world could use another Easter Bunny, right?”

Aster longed for it to be that easy, but there were three other people here to be the voice of reason, and it was Sandy who answered first, conjuring the image of Pitch making a little puppet bunny dance.

Jack shook his head. “But Bunny said Pitch was responsible for what happened to the rest of the Pooka; why would one go along with him?”

“He might not know there’s another Pooka out there. Pitch might have threatened him, or may have pretended to be someone else. And even if not, fear is a powerful motivator.” And there it was, North laying out the source of the worry that beat against the traitorous hope in Aster’s chest. Reasonable caution, but still painful to consider.

“So we go in all casual-like and try to sniff things out,” Jack suggested. “Not the whole pack, in case we need backup, but maybe one or two, make friends, see what’s up. And if it’s a new friend for Bunny, we can turn it into a proper party.”

“That’s...actually a very good idea.” Tooth settled next to Jack, frowning thoughtfully. “If he _is_ on the up and up, it’d be better not to let him languish any longer than necessary. And if he isn’t, it’s a good idea to keep an eye on him.”

“Great! So we’ll see you later!” Jack’s hand was on Aster’s wrist, already airborne, before anyone else could respond. Only the fact that Aster out-weighed him kept Jack from taking them to the air entirely before Aster could make a sputtered protest.

“What exactly are you doing with Bunny?”

Jack rolled his eyes. “Well, Tooth and Sandy can’t just drop everything to hare off to Oregon, and it’s four months to Christmas. So obviously the best people to send are me and Bunny.”

There was an angle there, he was certain. Jack couldn’t keep down his trickster streak for the life of him, and while it wasn’t often pranks, it was _always_ something sneaky. The problem was that Jack made sense. The others were nodding, and even Aster couldn’t deny he’d like having Jack at his back. He wasn’t half as likely as the others to get distracted by something like other duties or someone’s teeth.

He had, however, forgotten that Jack was a nosy galah. Aster had been able to take them to the edge of Gravity Falls, but now they were tracking through the forests, trying to find some sign of the place that was sheltering the other Pooka.

“So how’d you end up on Earth, if you’re a space rabbit?”

Aster’s cheek twitched. “I was on a scout ship when we heard that Pitch and his army had destroyed House Lunanoff. We were trying to get to a safe place, but - there wasn’t much that was safe, then. When we were attacked, I was the...only survivor. After everything I was a bit stuffed, took a bit of a kip, and ended up here. Place was spiffy, so I stayed on.” This wasn’t the time for the whole story, but he surprised himself thinking that there might be a time for that. Maybe it was the way Jack watched Aster attentively when he shared, or the fact that they’d been close to the same age when they’d lost everything.

If there were other reasons, he didn’t have time to figure it out, because their exploration had brought them into sight of a two-story A frame that bristled with bric-a-brac, signs exhorting any visitors to ‘Buy!’ and ‘Be Amazed!’ and ‘Give Me Money!’ Its roof proclaimed it the ‘Mystery Shack’. Before they could draw close, a girl slipped out from behind a tree in front of them. She was maybe a few years older than Jamie, brown-eyed, brown-haired, wide-eyed and with a round face used to smiling. She was wearing a sweater in the heat, green decorated with a grinning badger in sparkles. Her grin almost looked wider than her face, and when she saw Aster had noticed her, she waved at him.

“Hi! You must be a friend of Bilberry’s! I’m Mabel!”

“Jack Frost,” Jack said, holding out a hand. “And this is the Easter Bunny.”


	4. An Eventful Meeting

Bilberry, as the rabbit was called, was about as skittish as could be expected from someone on the run from ‘Fearlings’, creatures that by his description were sentient, soul-eating shadows. Or something similar. He’d responded to Grunkle Stan with a startled hiss, and the television with undisguised glee. He was currently watching the Badly-Dubbed Japanese Monster Movie Channel.

His ears suddenly twitched and then Bilberry was bolting for the front door. Dipper did his best to follow, but the rabbit moved fast. The front door slammed open.

“Hey, Dipper! I found Jack Frost and the Easter Bunny!”

Dipper arrived to find Bilberry sitting in the middle of a rack of license plates staring fixedly at another rabbit-person, covered in blue and grey fur itself covered in dark swirls. He had some sort of bandolier on, but seemed to have no thought for them, his eyes, vibrant green, fixed on Bilberry. A boy around Wendy’s age stood behind the other rabbit. He was pale, skin almost frostbitten in shade, and hair white as snow. He clutched a long, weathered staff tightly in one hand, bright blue eyes scanning his surroundings, as if he expected something terrible to happen to him in the Mystery Shack.

...He was clearly the sensible one in this group.

Mabel squeezed in past them, grinning at Dipper. “See? Jack Frost! And the _Easter Bunny_!”

Dipper gave the new rabbit a second look. He looked more like he belonged in the Australian outback than painting Easter eggs. But then again, he’d never paid a lot of attention to Easter and its accoutrements. And for all her enthusiasm, he was pretty sure Mabel herself only had a vague idea of what the Easter Bunny was. And Jack Frost could mean any sort of winter spirit.

So it looked like caution was up to him. “Are you really the Easter Bunny?”

“I know he looks like a kangaroo-”

“Oi, keep your cakehole shut about that!”

“But he’s the real deal.” The pale boy - Jack Frost, if Mabel was to be believed - slipped in around the bunny. “One of the Guardians of children against the horrors that haunt the night.”

Dipper couldn’t help the snort, even though he knew, as the sound escaped him, that it was bound to cause trouble.

The blue rabbit growled deep in his throat. “You want to rubbish what I do, you try it for a jiffy.”

“Oh, do not start with me. If you’re supposed to protect kids from the ‘horrors that haunt the night’, where were you when we had to fight the Summerween Trickster? Or when those wax statues tried to kill Grunkle Stan? We’ve had plenty to deal with on our own, thank you very much.” Dipper folded his arms and gave the rabbit a stern glare.

“Don’t forget when you raised the dead and got yourself possessed,” Mabel said. Her expression, when he looked at her, was a mask of innocence, and he couldn’t be sure if she’d meant to help or not.

It earned a laugh from Jack, though. “Well, Bunny’s not perfect, either. You should see him when he gets hopped up on chocolate.”

“You wanna go there, Snowflake?” ‘Bunny’ demanded, poking the boy’s chest. “I could bring up a certain lunchroom incident if we want to share embarrassing stories…”

“Okay, if you’re customers, get inside. If you’re freeloaders, get out.” Grunkle Stan shouldered past ‘Bunny’ and Jack. “Dipper, make sure inventory’s done before we close up. And if you feel like parting with those rabbit costumes, keep the Mystery Shack in mind!”

Grunkle Stan made a beeline for the kitchen. Dipper remembered a second too late that they’d put Gus in there to keep him safe, so reached the door only after the terrified squirrel bolted out, Grunkle Stan in hot pursuit.

“Grunkle Stan, it’s okay! It’s just Gravity Gus!”

The squirrel scrambled up Bilberry to take refuge on top of his head, allowing Grunkle Stan to get a more careful look, both at the rabbits and Jack. His eyes narrowed. “You didn’t summon some sort of demon, did you, Dipper?”

“No!” Dipper thought he heard a snicker from Jack, but vowed to ignore him. From the way the teenage...spirit was acting, he was some sort of trickster and didn’t need more encouragement. “Mabel says one of them’s the Easter Bunny.”

“Ah.” Grunkle Stan nodded. “Well, then if you need any supplies to save...Labor Day or whatever, make sure they know I’ve got reasonable rates. And rabbits, ice kid, try to limit the property damage. Or at least make sure it gets blamed on somebody else.”

He wandered back into the kitchen, leaving Jack staring blankly at his retreating back. “He saw me,” Jack said, awed. “How did he do that?”

Mabel slipped to his side and poked Jack’s ribs. “You’re not that small. I mean, he might get distracted because of the two giant rabbits, but you’re very noticeable.”

“Heh.” ‘Bunny’ dropped a hand (paw?) on Jack’s head. “He means we’re spirits, Jackie and I. Most people can’t see us, not unless they believe in us.”

“Yeah, I don’t know about ‘believing’, but Grunkle Stan is very open-minded when it comes to people he can sell things to, get weird stories out of, or punch in the face to keep them from ruining his shop.”

“We had to fight a dream demon with him,” Mabel piped in. “ _And_ he fought that horde of zombies you made.”

“So believing in stuff like that’s a survival trait.” Dipper tried not to glare at Mabel for bringing up the zombies again, but it was hard; for all that they’d never lent a hand when Dipper and Mabel needed it, these spirits thought they were hot stuff, and he didn’t want them to think he was a screw-up. “Frankly, protecting a squirrel from a horde of evil shadow spirits is...about par for the course.”

“Yeah, wait until you meet their boss,” Jack muttered. “He’s a nasty piece of work.”

Of _course_ the shadow creatures had a boss. Dipper hoped it didn’t turn out to be Bill Cipher.

“Is it the Boogeyman?”

Jack and Bunny gave Mabel twin, sharp looks. “How did you know that?” Bunny demanded.

“Pattern recognition.” Dipper gestured toward the living portion of the Shack. “Come on, let’s debrief in the living room and figure out what we’re going to do about these Fearlings and...the Boogeyman.”

“Hold it, Pines!” Pacifica Northwest kicked in the door, flanked by Blubs and Durland, “Unhand that squirrel!” She paused, looking at Gus perched on Bilberry’s head. “Oh, _God_ , is this one of your weird supernatural things?”

“It’s not _mine_ -”

“You say that, but every time something weird happens, you end up right in the middle of it,” Pacifica snapped. “Case in point. Rabbits are trying to kidnap Gravity Gus, and here they are in your house.”

“You want us to light ‘em up, Miss?” Blubs asked. He’d, oh god, drawn his taser, which meant _someone_ was going to be unconscious when this was all over.

Pacifica took a deep breath. “No. Whatever’s going on, the dorks aren’t planning to hurt Gus. And he’s my responsibility, not yours. Get out of here.” When they were gone, she turned back to Dipper, scowling. “Now, are you planning to leave me in this tacky gift shop like some sort of classless buffoon, or are you going to invite me in?”

She didn’t wait for a response, flouncing past him into the living room. The others followed, dragged along by an aristocratic bearing she hadn’t had last summer. She settled on the armchair, folded her arms, and gave Bilberry’s monster movies a sharp glare until Mabel turned down the volume. Bilberry hovered near the television, and the Easter Bunny settled about as far away from Bilberry as he could, although he kept shooting the other rabbit brief glances. Jack took a place next to Bunny, hovering between him and the rest of the room. Mabel took a seat on the couch, so Dipper joined her. Gus was still perched on Bilberry’s head, so Dipper decided to leave him there. He had no desire to deal with a panicked squirrel.

But now that everyone had settled, he wasn’t certain how to proceed.

Jack, though, had some idea, as he pushed away from the wall to stand at the approximate center of the room.

“Hey. Like Mabel here said, I’m Jack Frost. This is the Easter Bunny-”

“He’s not a bunny; he’s a Pooka,” Bilberry interrupted. “The only one I’ve seen in ages.”

Jack offered the Easter...Pooka a quick, all but unreadable glance. The Easter Bunny’s ears flattened against his head at Bilberry’s own assessing expression.

“Thought I was the last,” he said. 

“I hate to point this out, but since you’re both, er, male, a second Pooka isn’t going to do much.” Mabel, Jack, and even Pacifica glared at Dipper; Mabel punched his shoulder.

“Oh my _God_ , Dipper, just let them be happy that they aren’t doomed to an eternity of loneliness anymore.”

“Nah, she’s apples,” the Easter Pooka said. “I just thought, a bit-” He shrugged. “The kid’s right; two Pooka don’t make a species.”

Having been on the receiving end of the murderous rage of a pint-sized psychic and a dream demon, Dipper wouldn’t have expected that he was afraid of anything anymore. But the venomous scowl he got from Jack Frost chilled him to the bone, something he wasn’t certain was all in his head. He may have been from California, but he didn’t doubt that a winter spirit could drag a dangerous enough cold front out there to kill him if he wanted.

“Look, setting aside the fact Dipper has all the emotional sensitivity of a brick, this is a wonderful discovery! Albeit one that we can’t deal with this exact moment. Because, unfortunately, these Fearling characters are arrayed outside to slaughter this innocent squirrel in order to bring about eternal summer, which I’m presuming is bad, right?”

Jack left off his glaring to answer Mabel with a shrug. “Probably. And if it’s Pitch-”

“Which I’d bet my left ear it is,” the Easter Bunny interjected.

“Which it probably is, we’ve got more than Fearlings to worry about.”

“These things are, like, shadow monsters, right? Probably cause weird emotional spikes wherever they go?” At Jack’s nod, Dipper grinned, glad he could make up for upsetting the rabbits. “Then we can check with Uncle Ford to see if he knows anything-”

“No!” Bilberry had been mostly quiet, so the vehemence of his shout made Dipper jump and Mabel flinch. The other Pooka’s ears were flat against his head, and his teeth were bared, more like fangs than what Dipper would have expected from a rabbit-creature. When he realized everyone was staring at him, he seemed to shrink in on himself, ears flicking back and scowl turning into something a little more nervous. “We don’t need his type helping out.”

“But Uncle Ford’s really smart-”

“Just shut up!” Bilberry turned and bounded toward the stairs, gone before Dipper could compose himself.

“I reckon you should leave that topic alone,” the Easter Bunny said in the silence that followed. He was scowling, which brought the number of spirits Dipper had annoyed today up to two.

“Do...you want to go after him? Because if so, I should probably come along. You don’t want to wander around the Mystery Shack unescorted. Uncle Ford’s cleared out most of the really dangerous stuff, but he’s got a terrible memory and could’ve left anything just lying around.”

The Easter Bunny shifted his attention to Mabel, glare fading after a moment of looking at her incandescent smile. 

“Alright,” he agreed, voice a little rough. When the two of them moved toward the stairs, Jack followed, stopping only when the Easter Bunny’s ears twitched and he turned back to the winter spirit.

“What are you up to?”

“I’m sticking to you like glue, Cottontail. I’d hate to have to tell Sophie you got turned into a fly monster or something because I let you wander around a mad scientist’s house without proper supervision.” He grinned at the rab - Pooka, which caused the Easter Bunny to slump a little.

“Alright, come along. Just try not to upset Bilberry; he’s looking right skittish.” Gus decided upstairs wasn’t his cup of tea and hopped down from Bilberry’s head, scrambling in circles around Pacifica’s chair.

The excursion left Dipper and Pacifica alone in the living room. After a moment, she rolled her eyes and jumped down from her chair.

“Come on, if they’re going to forget about us, the least you can do is get me something to drink.”

Grunkle Stan, Wendy, and Soos were settled around the table. Grunkle Stan glared at Gus as he scrambled up to beg for scraps from Soos. “Are those rabbits out of my house yet?”

“Well, first, it’s Uncle Ford’s house.” Dipper pulled out a chair for Pacifica. “And second, no. Bilberry - he’s the red one - is sulking upstairs, and Mabel is mediating or keeping the Easter Bunny from getting sucked into an interdimensional lamp or something. I’m down here because otherwise I’d upset someone else.” He sat at his own chair and dropped his head down onto the table.

“Okay, and the rodent?”

“I don’t know. The Boogeyman’s trying to kill him or something. There’s some big...history between him and the Easter Bunny. Which, apparently - not a rabbit!” He lifted his head up to point at Soos. “Did you know that?”

Grunkle Stan grunted. “I know about as much about the Easter Bunny as you do. Rabbit. Eggs. Um...chocolate?”

“It’s news to me,” Wendy said. “So what’s with the pint-sized Northwest?”

“I have a name,” Pacifica growled.

“Yeah, watch me not care.”

“Wendy’s right.” At Pacifica’s glare, Dipper took a moment to replay the last few moments in his head. “Wait, sorry! Not what I meant! I mean - you’re not used to all this supernatural stuff. You can go home and we can keep track of Gus.”

“No, you can’t. Gus is _my_ responsibility.”

“Responsibility?”

“Yes!” Pacifica snapped, slamming her hands against the table. “You think I didn’t learn my lesson last summer? The Northwests might be a bunch of lying crooks, but they’ve taken charge of so many stupid traditions, and they’re so - central to this stupid town...sure, my parents make sure these things are all big events that remind people how great they are, but someone’s got to make sure things are done _right_.” Pacifica maintained eye contact with Dipper the entire time, violet eyes widening as she grew more agitated. By the end, she was panting and red-faced, the most agitated Dipper had ever seen her.

He took a moment in the stunned silence to try and compose himself. It wasn’t coming easily, so he just spoke, stammer and all. “So you knew-”

“We keep him at our house until the ceremony each year, and I saw he was missing, so I tracked him down here. And you want me to _leave_ when you’ve just told me the Boogeyman wants him dead?”

“Well, _dead’s_ not a problem, per se.” When Pacifica turned her shattered, angry gaze on Wendy, she held her hands up defensively. “Hold up. Look, there have been, like, three Gravity Gus’ in the last fifteen years. When I was thirteen, there was a bit of a kerfuffle because he died on like August 20th and there was some sort of squirrel plague or whatnot, so they couldn’t replace him.”

“Ha, yeah, they shelled out a fortune for the squirrel I got from that pet store in Tacoma.”

“Then what’s the problem? If we replace him when he dies, why do we need to keep him safe?”

“Well, my grandmother said that it’s important that we’ve picked a squirrel to represent the end of summer, otherwise, _anything_ could happen.”

“Not _anything_. The book says that not having a squirrel gives us, like, one week of autumn. We try to keep that from happening by keeping track of the squirrel and taking care of it, and there have been a _lot_ more than three squirrels in the last fifteen years. So it doesn’t matter if the - Fearlings - kill him or make him disappear, because even if we can’t find a replacement, it’s not the end of the world. All that really matters is…”

She trailed off, expression darkening. Dipper stepped sidelong up to her, testing a hand on the shoulder.

“Pacifica?”

“All that matters,” Pacifica concluded, “is what happens to Gus during the ceremony itself.”


	5. Conversations

They’d found Bilberry holed up in the attic; Mabel stepped aside to let Aster up, and grabbed Jack’s hoodie to keep him from following when he tried to.

“I think this is a - Pooka thing,” she declared, and Aster promised to himself to see if he could whip her up something special on Easter, for sparing him trying to keep Jack from sitting in on their conversation.

Bilberry was settled on top of a sea chest, staring out what looked like the topmost window in the place, a triangular, stained pane of glass.

“Oi, you alright?”

Bilberry laughed. The sound was too bitter for Aster’s taste, and it set up a knot of worry in his chest. “Oh, fine. You wonder how a Pooka could have been running around this place and not think to check out the giant rabbit people seemed to believe was about the place?”

“It...had occurred to me, yeah.”

“I ran into one of their scientists - a man like Ford, who’d stick a butterfly to a wall with a pin rather than let it be. He put me in a tube and froze me. I only got out a few weeks ago. Lucky I got out when I did, eh?”

“Yeah, lucky.” Aster tamped down on a surge of fury on the behalf of Bilberry; now was not the time to go off all cheesed off on some clueless human. Still, their tendency to poke and prod at things rather than allowing them just to be had a tendency to get under his skin. “If I’d known you were here, I’d have dragged you out. We could have been mates, tried to make a little something of the Pooka here on Earth.”

Bilberry snorted, kicking at the side of his perch. “Hate to disappoint you, ‘Bunny’, but that kid’s right; we’d need fifty Pooka to have much of a chance of reviving the species. Well, if we were committed to full-blooded Pooka.”

Aster wrinkled his nose, trying to figure out how’d they gotten to the repopulation discussion again. “Oh, I didn’t mean ‘mates’ that way. I just meant, try to make the world remember more of what we were.”

Bilberry chuckled and hopped down to the floor. “You sound like a shaman, holding up the old ways even with the universe falling down around our ears. Pretending El-Ahrairah speaks to you in trying times.”

“I knew someone who heard him, sometimes. He was ace.”

“Dead all the same, though.” Bilberry’s voice was flat, lacking even sorrow. Aster wanted to ask, but he knew asking what had happened to another Pooka in the last days before they came to Earth was too much.

“I heard him a time or two myself, and I’m still here. So who’s to say?”

Bilberry hummed thoughtfully and hopped up to the top of a stack of boxes, balancing to keep them from collapsing under him. “One vote for, then, and one against. I say we let it go before we split the last members of the Pooka race with a holy war. We’ve enough enemies without adding each other to the list.”

It was an old saying, something only a Pooka, or someone who spent a lot of time around them, would say. Another point for, then.

Aster gave Bilberry an assessing glance as the other Pooka hopped absent-mindedly from perch to perch in the crowded attic. He was unusually pragmatic for the child of the first seers, the red-eyed ones. He was in good shape, broad and muscular, about the height of a human. A soldier, perhaps, or a hunter. He decided it wouldn’t be rude to ask a little bit.

“Were you a digger, back home?”

“Digger?” Bilberry’s nose wrinkled in thought. “I don’t think I-”

“Sorry. Were you in the army?”

Bilberry snorted. “A delicate flower like me? Not a chance. I suppose a big strapping lad like you took to it like a frog to water.”

“Strapping? What _did_ you do, that you never saw a proper-sized Pooka?”

Bilberry laughed and shook his head. “Not telling. I’ve got a pretty good voice, though.” He slipped close to Aster, sniffing. “But now that I’ve weathered your interrogation, I think it’s my turn for a question.”

“Oh! Sorry; I hadn’t realized-”

“You got a name, or should I call you Bunny like Frost does?”

“Of course not.” Aster scratched idly at an ear. “I just got used to being the only one around - ah, sorry. My name’s Aster.”

Bilberry grinned disconcertingly; he seemed to have forgotten to shift his teeth back to normal from the fangs he’d taken when he’d been startled. “Good to meet you, Aster. Now that we know each other’s names, does that make us ‘mates’?”

“Rack off.” Aster shoved Bilberry into a stack of boxes; the other Pooka stumbled, but was still grinning when he straightened. “And mate? You might want to do something about your teeth.”

“Tee-?” Bilberry raised a hand to his mouth, only to grin wider when he felt the points. “Ah. Slipped my mind.” The teeth shifted into something more appropriate for an herbivore. “Better?”

“Makes me feel less like you’re planning to eat me when you smile. Are you ready to head back down?”

“Give me a few minutes. Tell the girl you dragged up here I’ll stay out of trouble.”

When Aster reached the bottom of the stairs, Jack and Mabel were deep in conversation about snowman construction.

“Bilberry needs a few minutes, but he probably won’t murder your brother when he gets back.”

“And what about you?”

“No promises,” Jack ground out.

“Ah, come on.” Mabel’s eyes widened to an almost impossible degree, chin quivering as she stepped close to Jack, who tugged his staff close to him as if the child was a threat. Which she might as well have been, given the wavering in Jack’s irritated scowl when faced with Mabel’s expression. “Dipper’s a little insensitive sometimes, but he means well. To be honest, Uncle Ford hasn’t been great for him. He encourages Dipper’s...science-ness.”

“He’s still an ankle-biter, Jack. We shouldn’t make his life harder.”

Jack sighed. “Okay. Come on, let’s see what they’ve gotten up to downstairs.”

Most of them seemed to have disappeared. Mabel poked her head into the empty kitchen before heading back out to the store. There, a redheaded teen was flipping through a magazine behind the counter. She waved at Mabel.

“Hey. Your Grunkle Stan took Soos, Pacifica, and Dipper to do research. They left me on Mystery Shack-slash-squirrel sitting duty.”

A quick glance around the cluttered store revealed exactly zero squirrels. 

“Um, Wendy?”

“He’s around here somewhere,” the girl, Wendy, replied, waving her hand to encompass the entire store. “Look, I blocked off the doors; I figured you’d be better at this ‘pet-sitting’ thing than me.”

The five-minute hunt through the Mystery Shack store was notable only for their need to be extremely careful to avoid from breaking anything. Mabel was adamant that her Grunkle Stan would pursue them to the ends of the earth to make them pay for anything damaged. The search came to an abrupt end when Gus, hiding among a pile of walnut sculptures, burst out, scrambled up Jack’s leg, and curled up to sleep in his hood.

“Oh my gosh, that is adorable!” Mabel produced a phone and snapped a picture before abruptly shifting demeanor, setting her smile into a grim line. “But there’s no time for frivolity. We have to save the world. I’ll go check on Bilberry - you will not believe the stuff Uncle Ford lets Dipper keep lying around in our room.”

“Yeah, we’ll run a quick perimeter.” Jack grabbed Aster’s arm and tugged him outside while Mabel jogged back into the residential part of the Shack. Once outside, Jack hopped up into the air, held aloft by the chill breeze that accompanied him whenever he was outside.

“So...Aster?”

Aster felt his ears droop. So the galah _had_ overheard. “Yeah. It’s my name. Don’t use it much nowadays.”

“I’ve known you three years, and you’ve never mentioned it.”

“Like I said, I don’t use it much.”

“Hm.” Jack didn’t push, but Aster didn’t think for one moment it’d been forgotten. He’d kept too many secrets for the years since they’d met, and while Jack was putting that on hold, he could hold a grudge as well as any creature.

Jack twisted his head suddenly, frowning at the squirrel nestled against his back. “He doesn’t talk much, does he?”

Aster shrugged. “He’s a squirrel.”

“But you’re - not a rabbit, right. Phil, though - he’s a groundhog, and he talks.”

“Yes, let’s hope Gravity Gus turns out like that drongo.” As Jack paused, thoughtfully, Aster decided to give him a break. “Gus is a young spirit, Jackie, and an animal to boot. He’s not gonna chinwag anytime soon, not until he’s at least powerful enough to survive being hit by a truck.”

Jack paused, halfway through circling Aster, staring down at him with a disbelieving twist to his lips. “A truck?”

“You haven’t figured it out yet, Jackie? Us spirits are as fit as a malley bull - hard as all get-out to kill without magic. We don’t age, either, in case you didn’t notice you’ve been looking the same for yonks.”

“Ha. Ha. So, what’s up with the other giant rabbit?”

“Pooka, Jack.”

“Space-rabbit. Don’t think I forgot about that. Is he secretly the May Day Bunny?”

“Naw. I don’t think he’s been on Earth as long as I had.” When Jack gave him a questioning look, Aster shrugged. “I don’t pretend to understand it, but Pooka warp drives are...strange when it comes to time. He could have popped out a couple of years ago, crash-landed somewhere around here.” He snapped his jaw shut before he spilled out the indignities Bilberry had faced here; it wasn’t Jack’s business, and he didn’t need to offend his new friend by spilling his secrets.

“Well, that’s good. If he’d been wandering all this time and never thought to look up the only other giant rabbit running around the place, that’d be pretty suspicious. What about the rest of it?”

“He’s alright. A bit of a larrikin, I think.”

“What are the chances he’s really Pitch in a latex mask?”

“About nil. He’s a...good bloke, Jackie. Just...alone. Skittish.”

“Aw, he’s just nervous talking to another giant bunny. And that whole guerilla warrior thing makes you look really imposing. He probably thinks you don’t have time for him.”

Aster snorted. “I’m not much by Pooka standards, Jackie. I was a digger - barely out of basic training. And I’m _short_ for a Pooka; Bilberry’s practically a kit at his height.”

“Does that mean the big bad Bunny act is compensating for being short?”

“It means Bilberry isn’t looking at me and seeing some ideal figure of a Pooka.”

“That’s a shame.” When he saw that Aster was watching him, Jack flushed and waved his hands in front of him. “I mean - you’re pretty cool, Bunny. You’re strong, responsible, a pretty good painter - and you do all your stuff without a workshop of yetis helping out.”

“I-” Aster let his mouth work soundlessly for a few moments. “That’s - good to hear.”

“No, really, you’re awesome, Bunny. It won’t take long for Bilberry to realize that running into you was really lucky.”

“Alright, that’s enough. We got stuff to do.”

“Awwww, but how will I know if Bilberry’s going to be good to you?”

“You can-” Aster paused, mind skipping a beat. Jack was _worried_ about him, about Bilberry? Did he think Aster couldn’t take care of himself? He was older than Jack, than humanity, had survived things worse than anything this world could throw at him.

But he’d said Aster was capable, tough. Which meant what, exactly?

“Now’s really not the time.” Aster wasn’t certain if he was answering Jack’s question, or just trying to convince himself. He grabbed Jack’s staff to drag him back down to earth. “Let’s check back in with Mabel.”

Mabel was on her phone in the living room. A pig was curled at her feet. “Yeah, go ahead. They seem pretty friendly, which, you know, expected. Hi! Yeah, I’ll see you in a bit.” She waved at Aster and Jack as they approached. “That was Grenda. She’s going to help us save, um, fall.”

“What? No, she isn’t. The last thing we need is more schoolies dragged into danger.”

“Lighten up, Bunny. They’re not in danger here; we didn’t see a single Fearling out there. And it wouldn’t hurt to spread a little belief around here.”

If Jack was chiding him, Aster couldn’t tell. He was certainly seeing an opportunity to shore up belief in Jack Frost, which Aster couldn’t blame him for. Risking kids, though, seemed a little extreme.

“Anyway, did you find Bilberry?”

“Should I? I went upstairs to get Waddles.” She patted the pig as it squealed happily. “He’s my best bud in almost every time stream.”

“I guess I must have misunderstood,” Aster allowed. “Maybe I should go after him.”

“No need.” Bilberry hopped down the last stairs and waved at Aster. “I just got lost in thought.”

At his appearance, Waddles poked his head up and began making urgent noises. Mabel chuckled and patted Waddles’ cheek.

“Yeah, I know. He’s a giant rabbit, just like the Easter Bunny.”

“Ohmygosh it’s really him!” Aster had only a moment to look around before a pink-clad girl slammed into him with all the enthusiasm of which a thirteen-year-old was capable. She was heavyset and had a grip as strong as Cupcake’s, but had apparently never felt the pressure to conceal her femininity. “Sir, it’s an honor and a pleasure.”

“I-”

“Now come on.” She pulled away and grabbed Aster’s wrist, dragging him after her. “I’ve got a lot of questions for you.” A smaller, dark-haired girl walked in as Aster’s captor dragged him into the kitchen.

“Help?” Aster asked Jack.

“Don’t worry!” Mabel shouted after them. “Grenda’s harmless!”

Grenda steered Aster to the kitchen table, sitting across from him and folding her hands into a steeple. “So. Bunny. Or is it Easter?”

“Aster.”

“Good to know.” Grenda produced a notebook and scribbled a note in it. “Now. Why don’t you tell me absolutely everything about your spirit friends.”

“What?”

“Your spirit friends. The Guardians, and various sundry.”

“What, why? What’s your angle?”

“Mabel and I are going to write comics and I need inspiration. Your magical guardian thing sounds like a good topic, but the story needs more cute boys - old guys and rabbits alone won’t cut it.”

Aster’s nose wrinkled of its own accord. “You’re going to replace me with a cute boy?”

Grenda laughed and patted Aster’s cheek. “Aw, you’re adorable. You’re going to have enough fans with your big, furry self.”

Aster didn’t have a good response to that, but he figured he ought to help Grenda out; this was Katherine’s sort of work, and just as important as the fighting. He tried to think about what spirits humans might think were ‘cute boys’ - aside from Jack, who tended to get lots of stares whenever they gathered with other spirits. Humans were so inconsistent about what constituted attraction anyway, he had no place to judge.

Nevertheless, he let Grenda quiz him as Bilberry wandered in and settled against the refrigerator; Aster was certain she’d get whatever she needed out of him as long as he was honest - within reason. He didn’t see the need to share his whole sordid history, the end of the Golden Age, with her. Not so long as there were people he might prefer to hear it from him rather than the latest comic books.

He made a mental note to sit down with Jack some time soon to explain the whole deal with Pitch...especially since Pitch’s daughter controlled Jack’s primary mode of transportation, and was prone to turning on anyone who made serious efforts to kill her father. It’d be a valuable piece of intelligence if they were running around Oregon trying to keep Pitch’s minions from trying to murder a squirrel.

Or, rather, capture a squirrel and sacrifice it to make sure summer never gave way to autumn.

…

To make sure winter died, and spring never came.

The understanding that this was a personal attack on Jack and Aster crystallized in Aster’s mind, sending a shock of cold down his spine. He rose, putting a restraining hand on Grenda’s shoulder, as he turned toward the living room. He had to tell Jack, to warn him that this plot was much more than they’d originally thought.

But then he felt a hand on his shoulder, saw a flash of light, and the memory drained away, leaving only the shock of fear, and then even that was gone.


	6. Council of War

It was a quiet ride back to the Mystery Shack. The book that detailed the meaning of Gus’ actions during the ceremony on Squirrel Day was unambiguous. If Gravity Gus died between 12:00 and 12:01 AM on August 21, some six hours away, summer would never end. Harvest season would never come, no fields would lie fallow, and no new growth would return to the earth. The world would die by inches.

No one had begrudged Dipper his furious scream of, “Seriously?” because the whole thing was ludicrous. Quentin Trembley, in his attempt to add a whimsical touch to Gravity Falls, may have doomed them all. He was pretty sure Pacifica was on his side in this; she had a mutinous look in her eyes that made him glad Quentin Trembley was on the run and unlikely to run into her.

Grunkle Stan was at the wheel, making use of his inventive driving skills to get them back to the Mystery Shack as soon as possible, so as to better secure the future of humanity.

Back at the Mystery Shack, the squirrel was still safe, curled up in the hood of Jack’s sweatshirt. The others were in varying states. Grenda and Mabel were interrogating the Easter Bunny about something he was pretty sure was related to their graphic novel. Jack Frost was perched on the back of the couch watching Candy and Uncle Ford playing video games, and Bilberry was nowhere to be seen.

“He bailed when your other uncle popped his head up out of his lab,” the Easter Bunny said, when questioned. “He said he’d keep an eye out for Fearlings.”

“Alone?” Dipper glanced out one of the windows, where the sky was darkening. “He’s not some mythical spirit trained to fight evil.”

“He needed some alone time. I’m keeping an ear out.” There was a hard edge to the rabbit’s voice, something that Dipper probably needed to leave alone for the moment.

Luckily, Bilberry wasn’t strictly necessary for the strategy meeting. Dipper called everyone into the living room for a briefing. With the Stans on the couch, Soos settled in an easy chair, the other kids scattered across the floor, Wendy headed home for the evening, and the spirits hovering by the door, Dipper was ready to begin.

“We got confirmation at the Northwest mansion: if the Fearlings get ahold of Gus, they can hold onto him until midnight and kill him, making summer last forever.”

Mabel raised her hand. “Is never-ending summer a bad thing?”

“Of course it is,” Pacifica snapped. “Do you want it be August _forever_? Or do you actually _try_ to make your hair like it’s been through ninety-percent humidity all the time?”

Dipper sighed and waved at Pacifica to shut up before she started a fight with Mabel. “Like Pacifica said, no one here wants it to be August forever. I think the best plan is splitting up. Someone needs to keep Gus safe, and someone needs to get track down the Boogeyman to see if they can convince him to call off his minions.”

“His name’s Pitch,” the Easter Bunny offered. “And he’s not the sort to listen to reason; every time he gets up to something like this, I end up having to clobber him half to death.”

Dipper grinned at the Pooka and nodded. “Okay, Bunny’s in charge of the beating the shit out of evil monsters team. And given that Gus has been sleeping in his hoodie for the last twelve hours, Jack’s in charge of protection detail. Feel free to divide up your available resources as you see fit.”

“What? No, I’m out. I have a business to run.” Grunkle Stan shoved himself to his feet and headed for his room. “Tell me if horrible monsters are trying to break in so I can get my shotgun.”

“Wait - resources?” the Easter Bunny demanded. He waved at the living room as a whole. “They’re children. You’re not honestly planning to ask a bunch of ankle-biters to risk their lives when we’re perfectly capable of doing it on our own, are you? Keeping them out of trouble is our _job_.”

“Then you can take Ford and your new Pooka buddy and I’ll take the kids.”

The Easter Bunny spun on his foot, glowering at Jack. “You’re not listening. _I’m_ not dragging them out there, but _you_ aren’t, either. They’re _children_ , Frostbite, and we’re supposed to keep them safe.”

“Are we?” Jack pushed away from the wall and circled the rabbit. “It sounds like it’s how you work, but this is their world, Bunny. And Mabel told me about some of the stuff they get up to - it’s not like they can’t handle themselves. Keeping them out of this is - worse than dragging someone into this without warning. In the end, this is about them, and I want them to see they can beat these things.”

“More like you want to show off.” Dipper glanced at Mabel, hoping he could convey through panicked expression alone that she needed to do something. He could see a friendship-shattering argument brewing, and knew there was nothing _he_ could do about it.

“And you’re not strutting around to impress Bilberry? I’d think him not being a spirit, you’d want to keep him out of the line of fire, _especially_ since this is Pitch. But news flash, _Aster_ , showing off for him isn’t going to make up for-”

“Hey!” Mabel shoved the two spirits apart; they offered her twin stares of disbelief, as if they’d never been faced with the full force of Mabel’s personality before. “You two are _friends_! You are not going to shout each other out of that!”

“We’re not-”

“I wasn’t-”

“Shush!” Mabel held up her hand, forestalling further talking. “I am going to drag the two of you upstairs to have an open, honest, _private_ conversation so you don’t stop talking to each other for a thousand years, and then, and _only then_ , are we going to finish up this planning meeting!”

Fifteen minutes later, Bilberry slipped into the room, sticking as close to the door as he could. He tilted his head at Dipper.

Dipper waved upward. “Mabel’s playing relationship coach upstairs. She’s going to let us continue the strategy meeting once she thinks the Easter Bunny and Jack aren’t going to rip each other’s throats out.”

“Ah.” Bilberry settled back, gaze fixed on Uncle Ford as he did. “Well, best to see if you can iron out any misunderstandings early on. If those two couldn’t get along, there’d be real trouble here.”

“Easier for you, though, right?”

Bilberry froze. “What do you mean?”

“You’re a Pooka, right? Like the Easter Bunny. It must be hard trying to get to know him when he’s spending time with non-Pookas.”

“Ah. I suppose. Might be considered a little mean, though, jumping on him when he’s disagreeing with his mate.”

Dipper shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. But you’re a Pooka, like him. Why’s he so weirded out seeing you?”

“Because he hadn’t seen another Pooka for...ages. I think he looks at me and doesn’t know how to act. Or he’s worried what I might expect from him. Or that I might die and leave him alone again. Any number of things.”

“Do you think there are any other Pooka out there?”

Bilberry shrugged. “I couldn’t say. It’d make rebuilding the species easier.”

“Don’t you mean ‘possible’? Without a girl Pooka, you can’t rebuild anything.”

“Pooka are _shapeshifters_ , kid.” Bilberry offered a sharp-toothed grin. “Sure, six months in a shape other than the one you’re used to is a bit of a pain. The real problem’s numbers. You’d need somewhere between fifteen and fifty Pooka to get a good repopulation effort going, and I doubt Pitch missed that many.”

“Wait - Pitch?”

Bilberry’s grin turned a little sad. “Pitch is about as old as Aster - the Easter Bunny, if not older. He destroyed whole worlds, an entire age, with the Fearlings. He wiped out the Pooka...among others.”

“But he missed two. Why not others?”

“I’m sure Aster would give you all sorts of reasons, but I’m with you and the optimism.”

“You know, if I got a genetic sample off you two, I could take a stab at developing a Pooka detector.”

Bilberry glanced at Uncle Ford, his lips curling back to reveal some very sharp teeth. “You can keep your greasy paws off of me, human.”

“Sorry! I was just trying to help.” Ford waved his hands, open-palmed. “And if we’re going to be throwing around speciest insults, I won’t hesitate to start talking about fleas.”

“Guys, calm down. We’re not going to beat this Pitch if we’re at each others’ throats.”

“Exactamundo, brother of mine!” Mabel came strutting down the stairs, grinning widely. Two spirits trailed after her, the Easter Bunny (Aster?) with his ears flat against his head and Jack looking at his feet. There was a very pointed six inches of space between them, even though it meant Aster was pressed up against the wall. Mabel had probably made them hug it out after she was convinced they’d made up. 

“In the interest of harmony, we’ve come to an agreement,” Mabel announced. “Bunny’s right that us kids _probably_ shouldn’t be hunting down a creature of ancient darkness and evil. But splitting up is going to lead to trouble. So Jack and Soos and us will hang out here trying to keep Gus safe. Ford, Aster here, and Bilberry will head out to see if they can track down Pitch before he gets here. Hopefully, we’ll beat that nasty old Boogeyman without any of us kids being at risk. And if the worst happens, we’ll all be doomed anyway.”

Bilberry’s mouth twisted up in a feral grin at the announcement, possibly anticipating beating up the mysterious Pitch. If Bilberry wasn’t exaggerating, Pitch probably deserved it.

“Hey.” Dipper poked Bilberry’s shoulder; the Pooka started, claws sliding from his fingers, before he calmed, smiling at Dipper.

“Yeah?”

“If you’re heading out there, you should have some cool stuff to defend yourself. Come on; I’ve got some stuff in my room.”

Dipper was halfway across the room before Bilberry moved to follow, but he caught up with Dipper by the time he reached the stairs.

“You’re going to need to get along with Uncle Ford if you’re going on a mission with him.”

Bilberry snorted, but didn’t otherwise respond. Dipper glanced back at him; the Pooka’s jaw was clenched shut, a pair of fangs poking out from the edge. Huh. Weird.

“You’ve got fangs. Aren’t you supposed to be some sort of rabbit?”

“Not even remotely, kid. Pooka are aliens.” Bilberry grinned, his fangs more prominent. “And shapeshifters, remember?” He stopped at the door to Dipper’s room, allowing him to open the door. “Most use it to run and hide, but I’m of the opinion it’s a poor race of shapeshifters that doesn’t use it to gain the advantage in every fight they have.”

Dipper nodded, although memories of another shapeshifter made him appreciate the running and hiding option more. He pushed his way into the room and reached under his bed for his stash. Rummaging through it, he tried to discard the items that would be clearly useless for this situation.

“I’ve got a kinetic UV flashlight, something we ended up deciding is an extraterrestrial Ginsu knife, this neat quick-drying foam bomb for immobilizing people…huh.” He dug around for another few minutes, but that seemed to be everything.

“What’s wrong?”

“The memory erasing gun isn’t in here. I should really check with Mabel when we get downstairs to see if she took it. Otherwise, we could be in real trouble. I’d hate to think who else might be using it.”

Behind him, Bilberry chuckled. “Sounds like it could cause all sorts of problems.”

“Especially if you use it smart. Wiping people’s memories wholesale’s noticeable, eventually. But if you wanted, you could keep your enemies off-balance, causing mis-communications, make them lose valuable intelligence…” When he shoved the box back under the bed and turned to Bilberry, the Pooka was watching him intently - not quite the ‘Dipper’s weird’ look he was used to getting, but not that far off from it. “What?”

“You’re going to turn out like your uncle someday,” Bilberry grumbled. “Picking the world apart rather than letting it be.”

“Hey! Uncle Ford’s a great guy! And what’s wrong with trying to find out how things work?”

“Nothing - if you don’t cut open the goose that lays the golden eggs to find out where they come from.” Bilberry bared his fangs at Dipper, and he wasn’t certain if he was imagining it or if they were longer than before. “Trust me, Dipper. I know men like your uncle. In the end, they’ll always pick chasing after more answers than thinking for two seconds about how they should be treating their fellow creatures.”

Dipper took a step forward, ready to get into a really heated argument, but then his vision went white. He blinked a few times, trying to clear the spots dancing across his eyes, and glared at Mabel’s side of the room, where her sun-catchers had a tendency to send dangerously intense beams of rainbow light into unsuspecting brothers’ eyes. He glanced back at Bilberry, who still looked disgruntled, arms folded tight against his body. He looked stressed, and Dipper decided to channel his inner Mabel just this once and drop it.

“You might be right,” he allowed. “I’ll keep it in mind. Did you need any of that gear?”

Bilberry held up the foam bomb, wiggling it a little, and Dipper grinned. “That’s my favorite. Come on, let’s get downstairs. I gotta get in on this planning meeting.”

He dragged Bilberry back downstairs, waving at Mabel when she saw him.

“Hey, I got our non-magical Pooka some gear to fight Pitch; I figured he didn’t want to head down to Uncle Ford’s lab.” He let Bilberry’s growl alone, knowing now was not the time to address it.

Mabel nodded. “Good, good. Everything in order up there? We’ve got to start running a perimeter.”

“Nah, everything’s fine. So let’s get this show on the road.”


	7. Negotiations

“I’m not letting either of you leave until you’re ready for a friendship hug.” Mabel had set herself just inside the door to her bedroom, her brow furrowed and body held rigid, a clear barrier to either Aster or Jack leaving through the door. Aster glanced at the far window, wondering if he could make a break for it. A quiet growl from Mabel put that idea on ice. 

Jack, rather than looking for an escape, had dropped himself on one of the beds - Dipper’s, if Aster had to guess, if only because of the vibrancy of the pink present on the other. There was a twist to his lips that looked a mite mutinous, but he, too, had sensed something in Mabel that was dangerous to cross.

It wasn’t going to do much good. Aster’s blood was still pounding, fury that Jack would sit there arguing they should risk _children’s_ lives - not to mention the words Jack had been skating on the edge of saying before Mabel had stopped them. And he could see, if he looked closely, Jack’s jittery movements, energy running too high to calm easily.

A loud clap sent Aster jumping; he saw Jack himself nearly roll off the bed. When Aster realized and turned to Mabel, the mad sheila was grinning at them both.

“First things first! I need to know if you two actually hate each other, because that’ll change my approach here.”

Jack shot Aster a startled glance, blue-white eyes wide, almost pained. Aster took it in, because his first instinct, too, had been to look at Jack, to see in his eyes whether the other spirit hated him. He saw nothing of that, just shock, fear, an open vulnerability that Aster could use to hurt him, if he actually hated Jack.

Shaken, he tore his gaze away to meet Mabel’s gaze. She was smiling at him, more gently than her previous mad grin, but still with an intensity he’d not seen matched anywhere.

“Well, this’ll make things easier,” she said with a gentler clap of her hands. “We can skip the part where I have to convince you the world wouldn’t be a better place if the other were dead. So we can move right onto the fun part. Bunny.” She spun on her heels, stepping close to Aster, wide eyes pulling at him, reminding him that anything he said, he had to say with Mabel standing right here. “Why did you look like you wanted to deck Jack?”

He glanced down at her, and then back up at Jack, stomach churning. With her here, he couldn’t yell and bluster, and, as she’d reminded him, he didn’t _want_ to. He cared about Jack, the drongo, and that meant he couldn’t rail off on him like he was a twit.

“I...Jack, we’re supposed to protect the children, and we can’t - I can’t see how letting them throw themselves into danger’s going to help.”

“Trying to keep them out of it’s just going to make more trouble.”

“I - what?”

Jack wasn’t quite grinning when Aster looked up at him, but there was a hint of a smile tugging at his lips. “How old _are_ you? Do you remember what kids do when adults tell them to stay put?”

Mabel tutted. “Try not to make fun of Bunny; this is a safe space.”

“No, she’s apples,” Aster said, waving toward Mabel. He stepped away from her, toward Jack, who was now sitting up, no longer the lackadaisical teen he’d seemed to be when he entered. “You wanted to keep them _busy_?”

“Yes? I mean, I figured they could help come up with ideas for keeping Gus safe - kids can get _really_ inventive when it comes to booby traps - but I also guessed if Pitch showed up here, things would be so thoroughly fucked it didn’t matter _where_ the kids were. I wasn’t planning to send them off traipsing through the woods on a snipe hunt.”

Something of resentment seemed to creep into Jack’s voice, a scowl touching his face. Aster didn’t need prompting from Mabel to know how to respond to that.

“Then I’m sorry.”

“What?” If they weren’t both so high-strung, Aster would have laughed at the dumbfounded, slack-jawed look on Jack’s face.

“I’m sorry. I thought you were playing at silly buggers, weren’t taking this seriously. It wasn’t ace, and I’m sorry.”

Jack’s expression shifted into something softer, his ever-present grin back. “It’s alright, Bunny. You got it into your head we’re all irresponsible youngsters.” He swung a little closer, bringing with him a flush of cold air. “But you learned something new about me, today, too! I’m just as keen at keeping those kids out of trouble as you are - I’m just more sneaky about it.”

“I’m half-tempted not to let the other mortals along, either.”

“What? Why?”

Aster gave Jack a level stare. “They kick the bucket a lot easier than us - and that’s without taking into account the number of spirits it’s hard to keep dead. We’re a lot harder to kill than humans - almost impossible without magic.” 

“You’d even keep Bilberry out of it?”

“I’m past the age where I need to impress anyone, Jackie. You were right about one thing - I wanna keep him safe. I might offer him a place in the Warren to kip when this is over.”

“Oh.” Jack gave Aster a quick smile. “Yeah, it’d be nice to have a friendly face around when you’re adapting to a new life.”

The words sent a twist through Aster’s stomach; they were a grim reminder that Jack hadn’t had a choice, hadn’t had a companion, hadn’t had a _home_ for centuries. He hadn’t _had_ a friendly face. Words failed him; how could you make that better? Aster’s paws twitched; they’d always had a direct line to his heart, acting before he had a chance to think. And right now, they wanted to scoop the kid up and undo the damage caused by three centuries of loneliness.

He shook the thought off; they weren’t nearly close enough where trying to hug Jack unannounced would end any way other than with someone getting bruised. But there was another impulse he _could_ indulge.

“I’m sorry, Jackie, about that. I should’ve...well. If you ever got any questions, I’d be happy to take a crack at them.”

Jack snorted, arms tucking under his armpits. “And why would you offer to be a font of information, when you never even told me your name?”

Aster let himself take a step closer, almost enough to touch, but he left his paw a few inches away from Jack’s shoulder. “Like I said, I barely think about it anymore, Jackie. It’s Bunnymund - E. Aster Bunnymund. Yeah, laugh it up; you see why I let folks just call me Bunny. You want to know something more private, Frostbite - just ask. Can’t promise I’ll answer, but...I won’t keep quiet if I’d tell anyone else.”

Jack hugged his arms around him tighter, throat working soundlessly before he just offered Aster a weak smile. He’d have joked, once, about the novelty of seeing Jack Frost speechless, but the moment, the camaraderie they’d managed, felt a little too fragile for such a jab.

“Excellent!” Aster jumped, and he saw Jack do the same. It was an embarrassment that he’d forgotten Mabel was there. She was wearing a delighted grin that stretched from ear to ear. “I’m almost ready to declare this mediation a success. There’s just one more step: hugging it out.”

“W - What?” Apparently, Jack blushed all the way down his neck, a color just bordering on purple. “We’re getting along fine - I don’t need to-”

“It is my firm belief,” Mabel intoned, raising one finger to the heavens, “that no argument is truly over unless the participants are willing to hug one another. It is my theory this is why there hasn’t been peace in the Middle East.” She clapped her hands together. “So! We’ll be up here until the two of you give me a nice, sincere hug. None of that leaning in bro stuff either. Right up in each others’ space.”

Aster stepped up next to Jack, close enough that he could smell the crisp scent of snow that surrounded Jack, and the mix of earth and evergreen that was his own scent. He spread his arms and tilted his head, smirking at Jack. Surprisingly, the expression didn’t seem to goad Jack into anything. He took a deep breath, blush fading, and then stepped up next to Aster, reaching his arms around the Pooka’s waist.

It was a surprise that when Aster wrapped his arms around Jack’s torso, it wasn’t as frail as he’d expected. He’d always assumed that slender, gangly form was fragile; Jack’s tendency to hunch and fold in on himself reinforced the image. Jack was lithe and athletic, the form of an acrobat rather than a brawler. Despite this surprising show of substance, once Jack’s arms were around Aster, he drew close with a shudder, something Aster thought might have been a muffled sob. Jack clung to him with a tenacity Aster would expect from someone who hadn’t had a proper hug in three centuries; he wouldn’t blame the lad, given that Aster hadn’t had one in decades himself. And he _did_ want to shelter Jack from the things in the universe that had beaten him down, so he held on as tight as he could.

When Aster felt Jack’s grip falter and slip apart, he stepped away. Jack was staring at his feet, the last traces of a flush on his cheeks. Aster didn’t know if it was shame at showing such vulnerability, or what; he reached out and brushed the top of Jack’s head with his paw. Jack started and met Aster’s gaze with his own wide eyes.

“Buck up, Jackie. I needed that as much as you.”

“R - really?” The grin was hesitant, but it was there.

“Surprise, not many people are keen on hugging a giant alien rabbit.”

“Morons,” Jack chuckled. He glanced back at Mabel, who was watching them with a gentle, serene smile. “Good enough?”

“ _More_ than good enough. A-plus hugging. Try to get in at least one good one every week; that doesn’t have to do with mediation, just good sense. Now, let’s go see if we can’t whoop this Pitch’s butt and save autumn.”

With the strange tension and fury between them gone, Aster felt comfortable trailing downstairs after Jack, even though he felt a little hesitant filling the space they’d shared a few moments ago. It was easy to remind Jack that needing comfort was normal, but harder to step into that space in front of others.

Once back into the living room, Aster stepped away from Jack, albeit with an apologetic smile. He glanced at Bilberry, who was hovering near Dipper, and felt a nervous twitch in his chest. The sight of another Pooka had left him scrambling for some sort of footing, a reference for all this. It hadn’t taken long to recall that another Pooka wouldn’t somehow resurrect his race. But having someone else who understood some of it all...it filled him with an anxious warmth, tight around his heart. And there was a vague sort of hope that there was something in Bilberry, a center he could use to become a spirit like himself, so he wouldn’t be the last Pooka again in a thousand years…

But there wasn’t time for those sorts of worries right now. Aster squared his shoulders, ready to take on the latest threat.


	8. The Setup

“So,” Jack said, perched on top of the television, glancing across the group of his assistants, “any ideas about how to keep this little squirrel safe? And don’t start with that amateur Home Alone stuff; I want this place to be a deathtrap.”

Candy began to chuckle.

“Are you okay, Candy?”

The chuckling intensified, the smaller girl shaking as her chuckling grew louder. At last, she threw her head back, laughing maniacally. Dipper would have gone the rest of his life secure in the knowledge that no one could sound creepier than Bill Cipher, if he hadn’t heard that laugh.

“I’ve watched every Saw movie. Every story that pits hapless victims against a grim, torturous gamemaster.” Her eyes glinted with something dangerous as she met Dipper’s gaze. “Get me down to your Uncle Ford’s lab, and there isn’t a creature alive that can get in here in one piece.”

“Well, looks like we’ve got our manager down here,” Jack said.

Soos raised a hand. “I’ll supervise; nail guns aren’t as friendly as they seem at first glance.”

“Great!” Jack glanced down at Dipper and Pacifica as Candy led Mabel and Grenda downstairs, a wicked grin on her lips. “I need you two working on something...a little more subtle.”

“I wouldn’t think you knew the meaning of the word.” Dipper snorted at Pacifica’s jab, and even Jack laughed. He floated off his perch, conjuring a snowball that he weighed carefully, eyeing Pacifica speculatively.

She bolted off the couch and away from the floating spirit, glaring at him. “Don’t you _dare_. This sweater cost more than your life. And I know you think you’re in no danger from a thirteen-year-old girl without an iota of magic in her blood, but _money can buy anything_.”

Jack stared at the fury radiating from Pacifica’s face and chuckled. “Right. Hands off.”

“What?” Pacifica’s resolve shook for a moment.

“I’m not going to _harass_ you,” Jack said, reaching out with a gnarled wood staff to tap the now-empty couch. “I don’t think we explained just who we are well; they’re terrible at explaining themselves, you know, and I think it’s rubbing off on me.” His smile faded to something a little rueful. “We’re supposed to keep you all safe and happy, and my job’s keeping things light-hearted and fun. Ruining your sweater’s off the list.”

“And what do you get out of it?”

“Immortality, phenomenal cosmic power, that sort of thing.” Jack shrugged. “But for me, always being surrounded by people who are having the times of their lives is more than enough - like an endless party. Anyway,” Jack plowed forward, ignoring the still-suspicious look on Pacifica’s face. “You two are going to help me lock down this place, supernaturally. In the absence of unicorn hair, which is _not_ worth the trouble, we’re going to have to wing it.”

“Iron. Salt.”

Jack gave Dipper a gentle smile. “Good thoughts, but unfortunately, unhelpful. Pitch and the Fearlings are something older than those traditions.”

“Christmas roses,” Pacifica interjected, and Jack paused, staring at her blankly for several seconds. When he didn’t respond, she stepped close to him, jaw clenching, eyes fixed forward. “My...nanny always had me put up Christmas roses to keep out bad influences. She said they kept Christmas cheerful.”

“Huh,” Jack all but whispered, giving Pacifica an assessing glance. “Well, I’m not the flower expert, so I couldn’t say. And in any case, unless we’ve got a nursery around here, it might be a little hard. But good, great! We’re brainstorming here!”

“Mr. Pines, no!” A distant crash and pained scream suggested the other team was making progress at making the Mystery Shack a deathtrap. Dipper exchanged a glance with Pacifica, who was almost smiling.

“Grunkle Stan’s fine, I’m sure,” Dipper said by way of explanation for his lack of concern.

“Oh.” Pacifica bit at her lip, glancing toward the upstairs, where the scream had come from.

“Hey, come on, this is not moping time. This is brainstorming time.” Jack floated around Pacifica in a wide circle before settling on the television.

“Well, then what _about_ unicorn hair?” Pacifica demanded. “Sure, you say it’s not worth it, but all we’ve got is your word for it.” Dipper could hear the quaver in her voice, and he wondered if Jack did, too. He was certain Jack noticed how she seemed to shrink in on herself when he turned his attention to her, because the spirit pressed his lips together in a barely-there frown.

“Well, they like to be left alone, and go to a lot of effort to keep it that way. But mostly, it’d require us to go outside where Bunny and Bilberry are hunting Pitch. A little too much exposure to danger for my taste. Letting you out of the house is off the table, I’m afraid.”

“You seriously want us to come up with a defense against a supernatural threat just with the tools we can scrounge up in the average tourist trap?”

Pacifica snorted, not even trying to look apologetic when Dipper glared at her. “Average? This has been the weirdest place in town as long as I’ve been alive. I bet you can’t wave your arms without running into some weird artifact with unexplained powers. Like what about this?”

She grabbed the nearest item and shoved it at Dipper, allowing him to examine it and identify it as the television remote. “This is the most normal object in the entire building; trust me, if the remote had any weirdness whatsoever, we’d have run into it.”

“My point stands!” Pacifica snapped, folding her arms in a single jerky motion. “I bet if we dug around, we could find some - some phase shifter, or lightsaber, or - or mind control device.”

“Actually, Uncle Ford made a mind-control tie that-”

“Fine, a neuralizer or something!”

“Memory erasing?” Dipper laughed. “Can’t say there’s anything like that around - wait, have you seen Men in Black?”

“I don’t see how that’s relevant. So what about some sort of energy shield? Your great-uncle...whichever, seems like they’d be the type to make some sort of ghost wall thing.”

“That’s...not a bad idea.” Dipper glanced up at Jack, who’d been watching the exchange with the same sort of gleeful attention only Mabel was capable of. “What do you think?”

“Um…” Jack’s smile faded to a half-smile, embarrassed if the almost violet shade of his cheeks was any sign. “I grew up a...while ago. I don’t really know much about ghost-busting equipment.”

“Yeah, but if something could keep out a ghost, could it keep out Pitch?”

“Huh.” Jack was quiet for only a moment before he shot Pacifica a grin so wide and white it was almost a little blinding. “It sounds like a solid plan… _if_ there’s anything like that in the house.”

Dipper waved out toward the store. “Uncle Ford’s been trying to consolidate most of his weird tech down in the basement; as long as we don’t do any more touching than necessary, he won’t mind if we head down there.”

Jack leapt from his perch and led the way out to the store, floating a few inches above the ground. Dipper stepped aside to let Pacifica go first; she paused a moment after she passed him, looking back at him with furrowed brows, a frown that wasn’t the haughty, judgmental expression he’d first met her wearing. Then she shook her head and followed Jack. Dipper paused himself before leaving the living room. Someone was nagging at him, like something he was missing, or had forgotten. He resolved to ask Mabel about it when she was finished booby-trapping the house.

Dipper found Jack poking around the shop trying to find the basement (or possibly something in the shop that wasn’t actually complete junk). He waved Jack and Pacifica over to the vending machine and punched in the code, grinning when both of his companions’ jaws dropped.

“Cool, right?”

“I gotta tell North to do something like this. Get a Coke machine or something to hide his office.” Jack whooped and dove down the stairs. 

Dipper gestured at the stairs, glancing at Pacifica. “If you know Men in Black, you’ll love Uncle Ford’s lab.”

She snorted and waltzed past him. Dipper followed, taking the silent moment to re-evaluate Pacifica, as he’d done once before. He knew she struggled under her parents’ influence, but he hadn’t really thought there was much more to her than that. Not that Pacifica liking geeky movies was going to make them best friends, but it was a point of connection, what Mabel insisted was the first step in developing meaningful relationships. It probably had done something good for Jack and the Easter Bunny; Dipper couldn’t see how else winter and spring spirits were getting along.

A squeak at ground level distracted Dipper from his thoughts. Gravity Gus was bolting up the stairs toward him. He had only a moment to glance behind the squirrel to see what he was fleeing before a metallic clang behind him introduced a new and worrying development to the situation. A slender, pale man of sickly appearance stood at the top of the stairs, golden eyes gleaming maliciously in the dark. He glided toward Dipper until he was far enough inside Dipper’s personal space to be called ‘creepy’, and gave Dipper a twisted, yellow grin.

“Hello, Pine Tree,” he whispered.

Dipper had taken six months of karate after last summer, transforming the strength and agility he’d gained with the Manotaurs into something approaching actual survival skills. So he didn’t blather and bluster and demand an explanation. He punched the pale, shadowy man in the lower intestine. He...may have hit a little lower. Regardless, it had the intended effect, giving Dipper and Gus enough time to bolt around him toward the door.

And then the shadows seemed to come alive, hands grasping at Dipper’s arms and legs. He heard a desperate squeak as a shadow the size of a child lifted him up by his tail.

“Be careful with him,” the pale man said. “We need him alive for another hour and a half. The boy, too.”

Dipper tried to struggle, but the shadows were like snakes, able to twist and constrict at ridiculous angles to keep him imprisoned. They dragged him, and Gus, downstairs, where Soos, Grunkle Stan, and the girls were being held in place by three shadowy creatures apiece. Jack was all but engulfed in shadow, the man, who Dipper was pretty sure was Pitch, clearly thought him a threat.

“I’m glad you were able to join us, Dipper. Your friends are really terrible company. All ‘you won’t get away with this’, and ‘this is barbaric’. All very repetitive.”

“How did you get in here?”

The man chuckled. “Oh, Dipper. Do you think I would have allowed your little squirrel to run anywhere if I wasn’t already there, waiting? But I’ve been rude. I’m-”

“Pitch. Black. I guessed.” Dipper stuck his tongue out at the spirit. “I think we would have noticed you lurking around.”

“Your great-uncle did several times. I think you might have once; you certainly noticed that someone had stolen your memory erasing gun. My...man on the inside helped with that.”

“And so what?” Jack ripped away a strip of shadow from his mouth, practically spitting his words. “If you’ve been hiding here all this time, why didn’t you just tie us all up earlier?”

“As we have a limited amount of time, I won’t wait for you to figure it out. I might not have a use for the rabbit, but my colleague does. And as he lacks my particular skillset, I thought I’d give him an opportunity to get at the rabbit away from his frosty little shadow. But I wouldn’t worry about that. You’re going to be too dead to care soon enough.”


	9. Turnabout

“I think a good place to start is where I ran into those Fearlings,” Bilberry said offhandedly as they stepped from the Mystery Shack. “Any objections?”

“No worries, mate.”

“Yes, if you think a logical search pattern would be helpful.”

Aster paused, half-a-step into following Bilberry. “What d’ya mean?”

“I mean,” Stanford said, pushing his glasses up his nose, “spirits are not necessarily logical creatures, especially those dabbling in the nature of fear and nightmares, which are themselves often illogical. You might equally as well suggest we stay near my house.”

“Nooo, I don’t think so. Pitch is the type to stick in something he can use as a lair, right, Aster?”

“Yeah.” Aster gave Bilberry a careful look. The rust-red Pooka bounced on his feet, eager to be off. He suspected Bilberry had as much reason to want to get back at Pitch as Aster, although he still resolved to try to keep the other Pooka out of it if at all possible. “We can take a gander where Bilberry ran into them, and if it doesn’t pan out, we can check somewhere else. Come on.”

With Aster’s approval, Bilberry took to the trail, crouching so he could track the scent of the fearlings that had chased him to the Mystery Shack. Bilberry seemed to be in fair shape, muscles bunching as he hopped after the trail, scrambling halfway up trees to follow the elusive scent. Shapechangers always had a bit of an edge in that department; to a degree, they could shift their muscles to improve their tone. And Aster didn’t know much about what cryogenics did to your health. Still, it seemed a rapid recovery, allowing him a surge of relief. After watching Bilberry for a few moments, Aster dropped to the ground to follow on all fours. He had to get Bilberry to hit the anchors a few times, in the interest of not losing their human companion. The fourth time, though, Stanford was looking a little worse for wear, red-faced and panting, and held up a hand to hold them in place.

When he straightened, though, Stanford paused, examining their surroundings. Something about the clearing they’d come to rest in seemed to unnerve him; his stance stiffened and he took a half-step back as he swallowed nervously.

“You alright, mate?”

“I don’t like this, rabbit,” Stanford muttered. “I don’t want to think about what Pitch could get up to if he’s been hiding around here - he isn’t good with technology, is he?”

“He was a general in the wars that established the Golden Age - he was a master of weapons far beyond anything humanity is currently capable of.”

Stanford paled. “Then the damage he could do with a standard high-energy phaser is…”

“Heaps.”

“I think I found the place!” Bilberry waved from a perch halfway up a tree. He tugged at a branch near him, and Aster heard a quiet gasp from behind him. “Yes!” The rust-red Pooka dropped to the ground, glancing around toward a hole that had opened in the ground in response to him pulling the lever.

Stanford sprinted toward him. “No, wait! Bilberry, there are some very dangerous things down there-”

Aster blinked away the last flash of the setting sun. Stanford was poking at a large opening in the ground, which framed metal stairs sinking beneath the clearing. “What’s that?”

“Some sort of bunker. It’s the sort of place I’d build if I’d been working with _really_ dangerous stuff, the sort of thing I wouldn’t want in my own basement.” He glanced up at Bilberry. “You really think Pitch is down here?”

“It’s his style,” Aster muttered.

“Then let’s check it out! Scientists first.”

Bilberry stepped aside as Stanford started down the stairs. The Pooka’s feral, sharp-toothed grin highlighted his anticipation at cornering Pitch. It was reminiscent of Aster’s early days, when he’d pushed aside the grief so he could fight, and eventually all he’d had was the battle-fury…

He resolved to talk to Bilberry about the danger of that sort of rage. Not now, of course; they needed to watch Stanford’s back-

Aster scowled at another flare of dying sunlight. He felt vaguely nauseous or dizzy; he couldn’t quite say. “Bilberry?”

The other Pooka popped his head from the ground, and waved at Aster. “Sorry, jumped the gun there. Watch your step on the way down. Also I think there’s some sort of weird trap on the way in.”

“No worries.”

After a few moments of silence walking down the stairs, Bilberry nudged Aster with his elbow; Aster started, but the scent of another Pooka was dampening some of his combat instincts and he let the contact go. “You’ve settled pretty well down here, haven’t you.”

“Yeah. Got a job as the Easter Bunny.”

“Settled down?”

“With who? I’m the last Pooka, mate.”

“Not anymore.” Bilberry gave Aster a broad wink, and a hesitant smile.

Oh. _Oh_. Bilberry hadn’t just been yacking earlier, when he’d brought up the fate of the species.

“Mate, I - I’m flattered, but it’s not - not in the cards.”

“Not in the _cards_?” Bilberry stopped, nudging Aster harder than he had before, glowering as his ears flattened against his head. “We’re the last two members of our species! No one else understands what we’ve lost. And on top of all of that, you’ve got a duty.”

Aster took a step back, his heart twisting. “Maybe I do, mate. But I got other duties, and here...I wanna be selfish. I don’t want my children to know they’re a means to an end, and I don’t want to have kits with someone I don’t-”

“That’s enough,” Bilberry grumbled. He stopped at the edge of a large room with strange symbols decorating the floor. “You don’t need to keep going on about it. Anyway, there’s a trick to this place…” He walked carefully along the metal tiles covering the room’s floor until he’d crossed safely, and turned, grinning, at Aster. Aster followed, trying to move along the same path Bilberry had; it must have worked, because nothing bad happened to him. Bilberry pushed through the door and stepped through into an abandoned lab, a room lined with dusty and broken computers. The air smelled of dust and burned plastic, and something more animal. Aster’s nose wrinkled of its own accord. A flash of light from one of the consoles made him sneeze.

“Something smells awful.”

“No helping it, I’m afraid.” Bilberry pushed around a fallen stack of computers, ignoring the still-sparking wires, to reach a heavy metal door, pressure-sealed, if the circular handle was any indication. He pulled the door open and glanced back at Aster. “I think we ought to check back here.”

Aster drew a breath to protest, but cut it back. Bilberry needed the same support Jack had never had, and if that meant giving in a little, it’d be alright. Besides, even though Aster doubted Pitch was lurking down here, it wasn’t impossible. “Go ahead, mate.”

Bilberry yanked the door open and stepped aside, gesturing at the dark closet within. Aster followed as directed, and tried to keep calm when Bilberry stepped in and slammed the door after them. It wasn’t claustrophobia; he spent most of his time underground. But the close metal walls felt, for a moment, like his room back on _The Zorrah_ , bringing back memories best left buried. He wasn’t a green cadet, fighting as the only response to a world slipping further into darkness. The world was light (sort of), and if Aster sometimes dreamed fitfully of the last few months he’d spent around other Pooka, it was his own problem.

But it did bring to mind all of the talk about reviving the Pooka species people had been throwing around. _Nobody_ , he thought, had brought it up seriously, but Bilberry had to have thought about it once or twice. It wasn’t the worst idea, even though it left Aster feeling a little hollow. It wouldn’t be anything like what he’d once hoped for with a Pooka he really cared for, or even the hesitant flickers of hope that had kindled in his heart since, but for the sake of a lost world, it might be worth it.

Bilberry pulled on a chain, and a drawn-out hiss heralded a cloud of white mist drifting down from vents near the ceiling.

“Don’t worry; it’s just a-”

A sign flashed above the wall opposite from where they entered. “Decontamination Complete”.

“Decontamination chamber, I see,” The wall slid aside to admit them into a rough stone tunnel that had seen better days. Rockfalls and some collisions had left it difficult to navigate, or difficult for non-Pooka. Aster took the lead, a surge of energy carrying him through the tunnel. The strange, animal scent was stronger here, something wet and almost rotten; it wasn’t quite reminiscent of Pitch, but he favored places where such remnants of living things could be found. 

A few bounds took Aster to a line of glass tubes, one still steaming with chill air that smelled sharply chemical. Signs cautioned him about the inflammability of the contents. A pair of metal tables sat on the side of the tubes, one dented and stained. The other was clean, set about with some sort of fabric straps. It looked a little like a medical lab, except-

Bilberry said someone had put him on ice. Seeing the stained and rusted metal table, Aster shivered at the thought of what else might have happened here. He turned to Bilberry, wondering how to ask if this was where Bilberry had been frozen, had been tortured.

“Aster!” A crackling voice seemed to shout from the wall; Bilberry and Aster both froze. Aster was certain Ford had stayed back at the Mystery Shack. Or...he didn’t remember the man coming with them, at least. “Aster, get out of there-”

Bilberry smashed a fist into the wall, cutting off Ford’s exclamation. His teeth were lengthening, eyes shifting forward, taking a predator’s shape. His chest rose and fell with ragged breaths. “Pitch isn’t down here, Aster. I...needed you to see this. Ford kept me stuck down here; he’d do worse to you and your friends if you let him. That’s why I needed him out of the way. I stole a memory-erasing gun they had around the house, and-”

“Hey.” Aster stepped close, tugging Bilberry into a brief embrace. “Calm down. We can talk this out, get him to agree to let you alone. It’ll be apples, I promise.”

“Thanks. I couldn’t let him stick me back in there.”

Aster gave Bilberry a weak smile. “Hey. I won’t let that happen.” Something nagged at the back of his mind, not just the revelation that Ford had been the one to trap Bilberry, which wasn’t much of a surprise, but something else…

“You said you took a memory-erasing gun from them.”

“Ah. Yeah.” Bilberry produced a brass pistol with an old-fashioned light bulb in the place of its barrel, a red glass tube raising up from the bulb, and a cylindrical canister slotted into the handle. “Ford’s assistant made it.”

“And you used it on me.”

“A couple times, yeah.”

“A couple? You obviously made me forget we came here with Ford. What else?” When Bilberry didn’t answer, Aster shoved into his personal space and grabbed his shoulder. “What else did you make me forget?”

“You weren’t keen on trying to revive the Pooka race with me,” Bilberry replied with a shrug.

“And what, you thought you’d give it another go when I didn’t remember the last time? Do you know how - _horrible_ that is? To think I was actually starting to consider - I don’t even want to _think_ about it!”

And Aster’s anger and adrenaline were surging enough that he moved to catch Bilberry’s wrist before the other Pooka could use the gun on him.

“What the _hell_? Is this how you’re going to solve all your problems?”

“It would have delayed the fallout from a lot of them, yeah. Like when you saw what our kits looked like.”

“What?”

The shift was sudden, too-elastic limbs wrapped around Aster’s legs and arms, slamming him backward into an unyielding surface. The wet flesh wrapped around him gave way to constricting fabric, and Aster realized the chill against his back was the intact metal table, made for vivisections and other vile surgeries.

It had happened too quick for Aster to respond, and he found the straps around his arms, legs, and chest made even token struggles difficult. He glared up at Bilberry, whose face had shifted back to normal. He looked almost sad, Aster felt, but that only fueled his confusion, the pained shock of betrayal.

“Bilberry, mate? What’re you doing?”

“I just wanted to revive my race, Aster. I thought you’d understand that.”

Aster tugged at his bonds a little harder, his heart beginning to reach an uncomfortable speed.   
“If you think this is going to _increase_ my chances of going along with you, you’re crazier than I thought! And if you think you can make me give you kits-”

Bilberry let out a hooting laugh. “Yeah, it would’ve been easier if I’d convinced you to go along on your own, but you seem to be laboring under the apprehension that I need your seed.”

A shadow of the old battle-rage flashed through Aster. “If you think for one moment I’m gonna shift girl so you can have a naughty, you perve, you’ve got another thing coming!”

Bilberry’s lips quirked upward, and then began to change. His mouth seemed to turn inside-out, teeth poking out from the perfectly circular may. The red in his eyes bled outward to cover the entire eyeball, and his hair began to fall away, revealing slimy white flesh beneath. His form bulged obscenely, and Aster gagged.

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news, Aster, but my race can mate with pretty much anything. I won’t bore you with the gritty biological details; you’ll be familiar enough with them soon.”

Half-remembered stories washed up in Aster’s mind, tales of the horrible things that dwelled in the dark corners of the universe, and his heart, already racing in a combination of panic and blind fury, stopped for a moment. “A _doppelganger_ ,” he choked out.

Bilberry’s mouth slurped loudly. “Oh, yes. Your people helped wipe us from the face of the universe, but we survived. Or, I did. Your friend Stanford decided to stick me on ice, but lucky he never thought I might have gotten out.”

“So what, was this some sort of snow job? Because Jackie’s going to find me sooner or later-”

“It’s hardly a ‘snow job,’ rabbit. Who do you think let me out? Pitch promised me the chance to rekindle my people - and yours. Sure, they’ll all be half-breeds, but we’ll have a chance.” He skittered forward, reminding Aster that Bilberry intended to introduce him to more than he wanted to know about doppleganger biology. “And Jack Frost isn’t going to come to your rescue; if he’s lucky, Pitch will kill him shortly after Gus. Oh, stop struggling. I’m not going to have my way with you right this moment. Stanford recovered from that concussion faster than I expected, and I don’t want an audience…”

“Afraid you’ve forgotten how to get naughty?” Nothing on earth could have kept Aster from making the taunt, even though it earned him an angry slap from Bilberry.

“If you keep your mouth shut, I might make the effort to make sure this isn’t any more unpleasant than it has to be.” Bilberry shifted into a serpentine form that wound its way into the darkness. Aster tried tugging at his bindings again, scowling when he realized they tightened when he tried to shrink down his wrists enough to escape. He doubted trying to bust through the bonds would help, either.

He took a deep breath, trying to keep the lingering panic and anger from clouding his mind. His only hope of getting out of here and helping Jack and the others was if he stayed calm.

It didn’t help much; he was well and truly trapped.

“This looks like a fine how-do-you-do.” Another Pooka dropped from the ceiling, landing cat-quiet on the rubble. He was covered in unmarked auburn fur, standing at a quite short five feet even, and was a skinny thing, like Jack. His eyes gleamed with an unearthly red glow. “I hope to Frith you’ve got a plan to get yourself out of here.”


	10. Sacrifice

“Who the hell are you? Not one of Bilberry’s mates, are you?”

The red-brown Pooka rolled his eyes and ambled over to Aster’s side, peering at Aster’s bindings. “It’s always tricky when your captors know about all of our little quirks. I don’t supposed you’ve got any dangerous solvents around, do you?”

“Who _are_ you?”

The red-brown Pooka snorted disdainfully. “Frith gave you a brain, didn’t he?”

He had. Old memories emerged from the fog of his past, of a Pooka who’d skirted close to death, who’d shared an impossible tale with Aster. That when a Pooka was stuck in a corner, death or a fate worse than death close at hand, El-Ahrairah, Prince With a Thousand Enemies, would appear. He couldn’t - or wouldn’t - touch, or otherwise interact with the world around him. But he would goad or push until you found a way out, or died.

They’d met before, but it was a lifetime ago and he’d all but forgotten.

“It’s been a while, mate.”

“I’ve been keeping myself busy. And you haven’t exactly needed my help - the big, bad Easter Bunny.”

“I suppose so.” Aster felt some of his stress fading. “Wait - what do you mean, keeping busy?”

El-Ahrairah shrugged. “I’ve been trying to keep the other surviving Pooka alive. Full-time job, I’ll tell you that.”

Aster’s heart skipped half a dozen beats. “ _Other Pooka_?”

“That’s not important right now. We’ve got to keep you from becoming mother to a new race of Doppelganger-Pooka hybrids, break out of here, and keep Pitch Black from killing your friends.”

“No, no, wait. Go back. There are other _Pooka_ alive?”

“No, you wait. You _think_. You’re stuck in a corner here, so everything else can take a backseat to _survival_. You can’t outrun this problem. You can’t outfight it - we had a hell of a time wiping the Doppelgangers the first time around. So you need to _think_. I taught you a new way of surviving once, Aster. You need another way, now.”

Aster took a deep breath, trying to take the warning to heart. It wasn’t easy, setting aside the surge of hope, or the worries that this hallucination was just wishful thinking; he was still half-convinced that El-Ahrairah was some sort of cultural delusion born of an overstressed mind. But he was right; escaping was the highest priority, especially since Bilberry had the memory-erasing gun. It was possible the others at the Mystery Shack were in danger they couldn’t even remember, and he was right that using it could keep Aster in an addled-enough state that he might not remember to struggle against being a mother to monsters, which meant any survivors would have to put up with a race of violent, carnivorous shape-shifters.

“You think I can out-clever this ratbag?”

El-Ahrairah shrugged. “Anything’s possible. Got any thoughts?”

“I could try turning him against Pitch.”

“Tch. Likely he’d just deal with Pitch _after_ he’s done with you.”

“I could pretend I’d changed my mind - see if he’ll get me out of those restraints.”

“And then what? He knows these caves better than you, and you can’t take a form he can’t, also.”

And then what; that was the question, wasn’t it? He had to get Bilberry out of the picture for good, but he couldn’t out-fight him; they could match each other form for form, blow for blow. He couldn’t think how he could trick the Doppelganger into a situation that would get him killed, or even the Puss in Boots trick of trapping him in something.

He was beginning to suspect ‘winning’ wasn’t in the equation, because the only solution he had ensured only that Bilberry wouldn’t win, not that Aster would manage to do so.

Bilberry, in his massive, bone-white form, scuttled out of a different bend in the tunnels from which he’d left, fangs clacking together in what Aster suspected was an expression of displeasure. The Doppelganger gave him a brief glance to ensure Aster had remained in place before kicking the dented table next to Aster.

“Forgot how well Stanford had this place locked down.” His face twisted into something more lapine, so he could grin, all teeth, at Aster. “Looks like he’ll have to wait until after I’m done in here.”

“Looks like you’re a really wally, mate.”

Bilberry’s face snapped back to normal, and he made an unpleasant, guttural sound. “Do you think this Australian affectation is earning you any fans? You’re older than this whole fucking planet.”

Aster shrugged, or tried to. “Can’t help it. But you know you’re in the shit, right?”

“In the shit?” The Doppelganger scuttled to Aster’s side, hot, rank breath washing over him. “I might be unfamiliar with that tongue, but I am certain it is a term more appropriate to your situation, at the total mercy of your opponent, your sworn enemy poised to destroy you and all you hold dear.”

“Yeah, but I’d also use it to talk about a bloke who’s about to die.”

It was impossible to explain how shapeshifting felt to species unable to accomplish the task. For Pooka, it was almost like a muscle, a combination of willpower and physical fitness, something that became almost instinctive among the most skilled shapeshifters. The best way Aster could explain what he did was that he clenched every muscle at once - something like what one would do if trying to roll up into a space much too small for them.

It violated every lesson his father had taught him about shapeshifting; a full-body shift without proper preparation could lead to excruciating cramps and vomiting. Luckily, that was a problem for him to worry about in six hours or so.

What it did right _now_ was reduce him to the size of a bumblebee quickly enough that the straps couldn’t contract to keep him in one place. Aster took a single great leap toward the glass tubes, forcing himself back to normal size in mid-air. The bizarre effects the shifts in size had on momentum caused him to crash through half-a-dozen tubes rather than just slamming into the first one. Yes, the transparent material fractured like glass and left Aster’s body covered with scores of cuts, and he was drenched with the sharp chemical scent of the cryogenic fluid. But that same fluid, steaming when it hit the relatively warmer air, sloshed out over the floor of the cave.

“What the hell? Did you think this would flash-freeze me or something?”

“No,” Aster replied. He punched through the console of the nearest tube, yanking wires out heedlessly. Sparks danced across his arms as he held them. He grinned at Bilberry, showing all his teeth. “Y’see, there’s signs all over these tube-things warning about how inflammable their contents are.”

“Wait a tick, Aster. I said you needed to get _out_ of here!”

Aster ignored El-Ahrairah and Bilberry’s blustering protests, dropping the wires to the surface of the liquid.

“Get out of here, Ford!” He hoped Stanford was able to hear them, or at least was smart enough to get out when Pooka started setting fires. 

And then he lunged at Bilberry, forcing his limbs into a shape that could grab and keep hold of the Doppelganger. It was enough to keep Bilberry in check for a moment, but then the Doppelganger shifted into a slippery, serpentine form, swiping Aster with a barbed tail that sliced through his cheek before bolting. Aster leapt after him in a lapine shape, lengthening his jaws and teeth such that when he closed in on the Doppleganger, he could sink his teeth into his back deep enough to keep a grip even when Bilberry twisted and thrashed. Bilberry’s spine went gelatinous, turning the already-foul taste in Aster’s mouth to slippery rot. The Doppelganger used his new flexibility to swing around and lunge for Aster’s jugular.

Aster tried to toss Bilberry to the side, only to find Bilberry had wrapped around Aster’s legs. The wrench was enough to shift his jugular far enough away to escape serious injury when Bilberry tore into his throat. Aster surged outward to take a familiar form, four spare arms sprouting from his back to rip at the creature wrapped around his waist. Skin and muscle tore before Bilberry escaped the grip and made as if to bolt.

But Aster wasn’t here to fight like a Pooka. He couldn’t outfight Bilberry, with wounds already bleeding heavily and body preparing to go into shock. He couldn’t outrun Bilberry. But neither could Bilberry do either to him.

And with the fate of the world at stake, an opportunity to protect children from the threat Bilberry might one day face, with the chance to ensure his allies had at least a hope of survival, Aster could fight like a Guardian.

That meant, if he had to, he would lay down his life for the good of the world. He would stay in a burning lab and do everything in his power to keep the last living Doppelganger trapped there until they were both dead.

Slick with blood, he grabbed at his opponent, finding the skin coated with spikes that oozed purple venom. He squeezed, resolved to keep this monster in one place as the surface of the cryogenic fluid transmuted to sheets of flame, scorching lungs and filling the air with smoke…

“If you get a chance, tell that other Pooka I’m sorry,” Aster whispered. And he shoved his enemy down into the flaming pool, his own flesh burning as he held the Doppelganger against certain death…

\---

Stanford Pines slammed his fist into the front door of the cabin. “Open up! It’s an emergency!”

It was a relief when the door swung open to reveal Wendy Corduroy, who didn’t think the still, lapine form in Stanford’s grip odd enough to comment on.

“Is that the _Easter Bunny_?”

Well, almost.

“We were down in my lab, and someone unfroze the shapeshifter-”

Wendy swung him around and slammed Stanford into the wall next to the door; sending Aster tumbling to the ground. “Quick! Why do they call him Dipper?”

“What?” The arm on his throat made talking hard. “What are you-”

“ _Why do they call him Dipper_?”

“It’s that birthmark he’s got - his great-grandfather had the same thing!”

“Okay.” Wendy stepped back, letting Stanford breathe easy. “And how sure are you this isn’t the shapeshifter?”

“Well, he’d be a Pooka, regardless, and they’re shapeshifters, too-”

“ _Is this the carnivorous monster you locked in your stupid bunker lab_?” Wendy roared.

“No! Jeez! The dead one in my lab looks exactly like the shapeshifter’s natural form! And this one doesn’t look good, either!”

“Right.” Wendy dropped down and pressed her fingers against Aster’s neck. After a moment, she shook her head and laid her ear against his chest. “He’s not breathing, and I can’t get a heartbeat. So unless Pooka biology is _vastly_ different from that of any other vertebrate, he’s dead.”

“Fuck!” Stanford flailed wildly for a more vehement curse, but he couldn’t get his head around his language center. “If that damn shapeshifter wasn’t lying, Pitch has got the rest of them cornered in my house, and without some serious firepower, which is all _in my basement_ , he’s going to kill them all!”

Wendy took a deep breath and rose to her feet. “Oh, Stanford. I’m a Corduroy, of a dozen generations of Corduroys. I grew up in these woods with an axe in my hand. So yeah, we’re going to have to address the dead Easter Bunny thing eventually, but you are _not_ without serious firepower. Let’s murder the _heck_ out of an evil shadow spirit.”


	11. Confrontation

Jack Frost seemed to be thoroughly bound up; the Fearlings had chucked his staff to the other side of the lab, in a clear expectation that letting him have it would make trouble for Pitch. Grenda had discovered that biting the Fearlings was largely counterproductive, and despite her nine-month devotion to the art of magic and illusion, Mabel hadn’t been able to wiggle free. Gravity Gus was a little slower reaching the ‘biting Fearlings isn’t helpful’ conclusion, but that was mostly because he was a squirrel, and was just panicking over being kept in the grip of creatures that filled the spirit with sourceless fear. Well, he’d sort of worn himself out and was just laying, boneless in the Fearlings’ grasp.

Dipper glanced at Jack, who was slumped in the grips of the Fearlings. He looked as if he’d already given up; the suggestion that Pitch’s associate had plans for Aster must have rattled him. Well, Dipper was used to solving these problems without the assistance of magical guardians. Grunkle Stan had a narrow-eyed look that suggested he was scouting out the place for ideas. 

Pacifica was glaring at Pitch with all the fury 150 years of aristocracy could instill in a child. And then Dipper saw her set her jaw in a determined manner and grin, a nasty little grin he usually saw before she made a cutting comment.

“How long are you going to be keeping up this charade?” she demanded.

Pitch looked down at her with a smirk. “You seem terribly certain I’m not going to kill you.”

“Oh, that? I’m fairly certain Jack and that rabbit said their job is to protect people like me from danger. If I die, my father will be _quite upset_. And when my father is upset, he tends to make sure no one is having a better day than him.” Pacifica gave a little sniff and tilt of her head. “No, I meant this whole ‘making summer last forever’ deal. You’re aware it isn’t going to work, right?”

Pitch scoffed and stalked toward Pacifica, looking like he was making a conscious effort to loom as he did so. “The lore is quite clear - if that creature dies at the appointed time, autumn will never come. Winter will never arrive. And spring will never bloom.”

“Everything anyone knows about that squirrel is there because someone saw what it did and wrote it down. And that means _no one_ knows what happens if the squirrel dies, because _fall happened last year_.”

“Child, if you understood half of what I do about the laws governing the supernatural-”

“I’ve spent enough time around rich white men to _know_ that’s what people say when they want to seem like they know what they’re talking about when they’ve got no clue. And you have _no clue_ , ‘Pitch’.”

Pitch snorted, turning his back on Pacifica. She didn’t rise to the bait to yell some more. He, however, seemed to need to keep talking. “There are wheels within wheels here, child. At the end of the day, the chance to destroy Jack Frost is well worth the risk. Especially that your last moments will be haunted by the knowledge that Bunny has abandoned you.”

Jack’s eyes widened slightly, and Mabel frowned thoughtfully.

“I’m pretty sure they were getting along when I was done with them,” Mabel said. “They even hugged it out!”

“And yet he left you here to babysit while he went off with the other surviving Pooka - the only other person who can really understand him. The one he would _need_ to revive his race.” He slipped a little closer. “After all, he’s already closer to that beast than he ever will be to you. He offered his name, Jackie, offered up his _home_. What has he given you?”

Jack was shaking, quiet sounds escaping him as he let his head droop. There were frowns all around, but Dipper couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something familiar about Pitch’s words, a strange sensation, given that he’d never been worried about being abandoned by a giant rabbit going off to start a family.

“You’re going to die here, because your rabbit friend made his choice to leave you behind.”

It wasn’t the voice, or the words. It was something about the cadence, the rhythm that drew the mind into a spiral of pain. Dipper caught a glance of Jack’s face, and then knew exactly where he’d heard Pitch’s words before.

They were the refrain to his worst nightmares, his deepest insecurities given voice.

“This isn’t real, Jack!”

“Of course it is!” Pitch slunk to Dipper’s side. “Where _is_ Aster? Surely if he cared for you at all, he’d know you were in danger.”

“Wait, what?” Pacifica raised an inquisitive eyebrow. “I’m not...super into this magic stuff, but that sounds fake.”

“That’s what I’m saying!” Dipper cried. “He’s talking like that stupid little voice in your head that says every terrible thing you’ve ever worried about, and ignores _every rational argument_ about why it’s full of crap!”

“I’m not...you don’t _know_ -”

“ _Yes I do_!” Mabel howled. “I saw that stupid rabbit hug you like you were the most precious treasure in the _entire universe_ , so I will not allow you to decide that you don’t matter to him - no matter _what_ that stupid old guy says!”

“You will shut _up_ , child!”

“No, you listen to her, Jack! Everyone has people in their lives that tells them they aren’t worth anything, that the world is a terrible place where good things only happen to powerful people. But you get to decide whether you listen to them...or if you believe there’s good in the world.”

“ _SILENCE_!” Shadows tightened around Dipper’s throat, and he saw the others clawing at the bonds around their own. Once the lack of oxygen had silenced his captives, Pitch straightened, tugging at his dark clothes to provide a neater appearance. He gave Jack a smug smile. “Wheels within wheels, child. Many ways to dismantle the spirits of winter and spring. Or have you forgotten that you will die here, and that Aster will be too ensnared in Bilberry’s machinations to help you? He may not wish to stay, but he will, and the end result will be a new era of terror. Oh yes,” his grin went wide and sinister, “Bilberry is not the friend you hoped he would be-”

“Oh shut up!” Dipper yanked ineffectively at the Fearlings guarding him, wanting desperately to punch the smug spirit in the nose.

Grunkle Stan did one better, lunging forward and dragging his Fearlings forward far enough that he could actually swing one around, nearly beaning Pitch in the skull. The spirits holding Grunkle Stan redoubled their efforts to drag him back, but Grunkle Stan gave Pitch a grim smile.

And Mabel seemed to have found some of her own footing. “Yeah, Dipper’s right! You’re sitting here trying to make us feel that everything’s hopeless, that you’re going to get your way and all of us are going to die. But you’re counting out the Easter Bunny, and Grunkle Ford. You’re acting like there’s nothing they can do, like they aren’t doing everything they possibly can to rescue us and stop you! You’re acting like it’s hopeless, when it’s just the opposite.”

“Oh, child,” Pitch crooned, “it will be a delight to see you in the moment when that faith sputters out in the realization that no one will arrive to save you.”

“I’m hurt you think I’m no one.”

It was a testament to Pitch’s actual competence that when Wendy leapt at him, twin axes descending on him with all the fury a teenage child of lumberjacks could muster, he called a scythe out of nothingness with just enough time to turn aside the blades.

“Too slow, child, to hurt the master of darkness.”

“That wasn’t her job, you wanker.” A creature seemed to pop out of nowhere behind Pitch, a monstrous, six-armed beast, a hulking, ten-foot-tall creature that grabbed at Pitch with its every free limb. Its skin was red and slime-slick, form covered in bulging muscles, and paws ending in vicious claws. Long ears rested flat against its head, and spring-green eyes gleamed in the semi-darkness of the lab. With the Australian accent, it was almost certainly the Easter Bunny, hopped up on whatever drove lapine shapechangers into murderous rages. Shadows surged away from their captives to surround the raging rabbit-beast, which was a mistake. 

Everyone in the room had faced life-or-death situations before, and most of them had developed the instincts necessary to survive - or win. Mabel of course was shortly airborne and swinging at Pitch on the line of her grappling hook, adding one more distraction to the spirit now trying to avoid dismemberment at the hands of Wendy, distraction that meant he didn’t notice Grenda until she head-butted him, duplicating the damage Dipper had inflicted earlier, if the squeak that escaped Pitch’s lungs was any indication.

Candy went for the consoles, hitting a button that flooded the lab with UV light Uncle Ford had installed several months ago to deal with vampires. Dipper himself went for Gus, dodging the melee to grab the squirrel and keep it out of the way. Grunkle Stan was fleeing, although he appeared to be leading Soos and Pacifica with him.

Jack wasn’t moving, staring at the shadows swarming the Easter Bunny blankly. Dipper bolted behind him and poked the winter spirit in the shoulder; he started and nearly hit Dipper in the nose at the touch.

“If you’re not going to help over there,” Dipper said, pointing to where shreds of shadow flew in every direction as the Easter Bunny roared and stretched to his full ten-foot height, spines erupting from his skin to tear the Fearlings to ribbons, “make sure Gus and I here don’t get skewered.”

“I…” Jack gave Dipper a wide-eyed, sort of helpless look. “Right.”

The humans other than Wendy scattered as the Easter Bunny, free of any constraints, lunged at Pitch with a six-armed punch that sent him flying into the far wall with a bone-shuddering impact.

“He’s hurt,” Jack whispered as the rabbit loped toward Pitch. Dipper almost retorted that the impact would have hurt anyone, but then he took an actual moment to look at the bunny’s movements, at the slight pause and favoring of his right leg, of the fact that in places his fur was torn away, leaving scorched and bloody skin beneath.

“He’ll be okay, though...right?”

Jack shook his head distractedly, eyes still fixed on the rabbit. “I don’t know.”

Pitch tried...something, but with Wendy covering his escape, he didn’t have time to get the space he needed to defend from the Easter Bunny’s furious strikes, let alone attack. Angry swipes and punches had left the man bloody and bruised. He fell, and struggled to even stand under the assault. 

Dipper tried to step around Jack; he saw Grenda holding back Mabel even as Jack put a hand on his shoulder.

“He’s going to kill Pitch!”

“Yeah, well, don’t get too close. Aster - Bunny!” The raging rabbit didn’t seem to hear, but then the room shook. A rising, howling sound followed the vibration, and a sound like seventy snowglobes shattering within a second of each other. A blustering, biting wind enveloped Dipper, carrying with it a wispy fog that encircled the bunny and Pitch.

A figure emerged from the mist, or seemed to have always been in the mist, like cloud shapes. It looked like a woman, with dark hair and indistinct features, something like ancient carvings, enough to show a shape but not enough for personality. She formed in the space between Pitch and the rabbit, air eddying around her even as she stood still.

“Aster!” She spoke in a low voice, something that rumbled and hinted at punishing waves, the start of an avalanche, the shaking of the earth. It made the Easter Bunny flinch, and gave her an opening to drift closer. “Aster, stop. You _know_ I will not countenance this. Certainly not from a place of fury and hatred.”

“Hurts,” the bunny growled. “He threatened me. He threatened Jack. He threatened the _children_.”

“And I have never objected to you stopping him, from preventing him from causing such pain. But they are safe, and it is gone midnight. There is no more threat. You can let my father go.”

The Easter Bunny’s sides heaved as he breathed heavily, making no move to further attack Pitch, but not moving, either. At last he turned aside. “Fine. Take him. Make sure I don’t see him for a long time.”

“Indeed. So cowed, it will be easier to remind him of how civilized spirits act.”

“Yeah, rack off. We got enough problems-” He paused and fell to one knee, his words broken off by a fit of violent coughing.

“Come along, Father,” the woman murmured, and enveloped Pitch with mist. A breeze sprang up to carry it back up the stairs, and both of them were gone.

Jack, however, had sprinted toward the rabbit’s side as soon as he fell. “Bunny! Are you alright?”

“Cheers, mate; I’m not gonna kick the bucket right after we won. Mind, it wouldn’t hurt to go see North…” And with that, he finished collapsing, leaving smears of blood along the metal floor.

“Bunny!”

“Hey, calm down.” Mabel patted his shoulder. “He said he’ll be okay. You got a way to get up to...North? Like North Pole? Is he talking about Santa Claus?”

“Y - yeah.” Jack fumbled in the pocket of his sweater to produce a glittering snowglobe. “Yeah. I, uh, gotta go. Thank you for helping, um, but-”

“Go on!” Mabel said, waving at him. “We’re great at cleaning up after apocalyptic situations.”

With her reassurance, Jack dropped the globe on the ground, pulling open a glittering wormhole through which he pulled the rabbit and himself.

For a moment, there was silence in the lab.

“Did anyone write down what Gus did at midnight?” Grenda asked.


	12. Epilogue

North had shoved Jack out of Bunny’s room almost immediately. “Is no need for extra people hovering around bed.” Jack didn’t understand how North didn’t count as ‘extra people’; he’d never seen Santa Claus demonstrate any medical ability. But forcing his way back in there while North and a pair of yeti tried to keep Bunny from kicking the bucket wasn’t going to help Bunny get better.

He was reduced to hoping that pacing outside until they were done would somehow draw the attention of some friendly force willing to direct good vibes toward Bunny. After about half an hour of that, the sturdy, sanded wood walls were beginning to feel claustrophobic, and Jack took to the air. It didn’t help much, but feeling the wind holding him up felt like a gentle embrace, the only one he’d had for so long.

And even that, he’d never really understood. Like Bunny (Aster), there were secrets in the wind he’d never known, never _thought to ask_. He’d been content to let the wind carry him without taking the time to think about it. To see a woman who commanded it without a thought, who oozed the power of nature itself, was a shock and a reminder that for all his loneliness, he’d never thought to care much about those closest to him.

Well, that would change, if only Bunny would _pull through_.

When North stepped out of the room, Jack swooped down on him, grabbing his collar. “Is he alright?”

“Bah, is fine. Is just weak from dying.”

Jack’s heart, always a little irregular since his resurrection, skipped a beat. “ _Dying_?”

“Ah, no! It’s not - come on, we go to my office, talk.” He steered Jack firmly back along to his office, resisting Jack’s attempts to escape and check in on Bunny. Once seated, North gave him a wide smile. “Surely you know, spirits are very hard to kill without magic, yes?”

Jack nodded. “Bunny mentioned something like that.”

“But certain spirits are more than that. Because of their nature, they are also hard to _keep_ dead. With the right circumstances, they can come back to life. Cyclical spirits, seasonal spirits...But Bunny is special. Bunny is spirit of _Easter_. Holiday of rebirth, of resurrection. When Bunny dies...even magic might not keep him dead. Only time I worry is if he stays dead for more than three days.”

Hints of memory rose from the fog of Jack’s past, of services and nights spent reading from the family Bible, putting perspective and a sort of sense to the fact that Bunny was slightly more immortal than the rest of them. “But he collapsed-”

North spread his arms. “Yes, healing takes _time_. Bunny did not allow himself time to heal before coming back. Was weak, bleeding, and still wanted to fight. Is lucky he didn’t die _again_. But he will be fine, with rest and good care. You just see.”

And yes, Jack trusted North, but until he saw Bunny, bandaged and breathing quietly as he slept, he didn’t quite believe it.

And maybe it was stupid, but Bunny’s rebirth felt like a chance to start over, to do one relationship in his life right this time.

He could always hope, right?

**Author's Note:**

> Someone made comments vis a vis the Guardians on my Fire and Wonder series. It wasn't right for that story, but the ideas percolated. So here it is. I hope y'all enjoy this.


End file.
